The UK-EU Summit held in London last week, the first of its kind since Brexit, produced a package of agreements that the Starmer government hailed as “a new chapter in Britain’s relationship with Europe” — and that Brexit supporters immediately condemned as “a stealthy return to EU rule.” The reality, as is so often the case in complex diplomatic arrangements, sits somewhere between these poles: a meaningful and substantive improvement in UK-EU relations, but well short of the closer alignment that many in the business community had hoped for and well short of anything resembling a reversal of Brexit.
What Was Agreed
The centrepiece of the summit package was a new UK-EU Security and Defence Partnership, which will formalise UK participation in EU defence procurement programmes — including the European Defence Fund — and create a new bilateral framework for intelligence sharing and joint military exercises. This represents a significant upgrade of the relationship in the security domain, where both sides recognised strong mutual interest in the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine and heightened concerns about Russian hybrid warfare targeting European infrastructure.
On trade, the summit produced an agreement in principle on a Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) deal that, once formally concluded, would reduce the veterinary and food safety checks currently applied to UK food exports entering the EU single market. British farmers and food producers — who have faced significant additional costs and paperwork since the full implementation of post-Brexit trade arrangements — stand to be among the primary beneficiaries. The National Farmers’ Union described the agreement as “a very welcome step forward that will ease the burden on agricultural exporters and help level the competitive playing field.”
A new Youth Mobility Scheme was also announced, creating a structured pathway for young people aged 18-30 from both the UK and EU member states to live and work across the Channel for up to three years. The scheme, modelled loosely on similar arrangements the UK has with countries including Australia and Japan, will be capped and subject to reciprocity conditions. Notably, it does not constitute freedom of movement and will involve explicit quota management — a distinction the government emphasised repeatedly in its communications to avoid the politically charged language of the Brexit debate.
What Remains Unresolved
The summit did not resolve several of the most economically significant aspects of the post-Brexit trade relationship. Financial services — worth approximately £100 billion annually to the UK economy and representing the single most valuable sector in UK-EU trade — remains largely outside the new framework. The EU’s refusal to grant UK financial services firms the “equivalence” determinations that would allow them to operate in EU markets on terms comparable to EU-based institutions continues to impose costs on the City of London estimated in the billions of pounds annually.
There was no agreement on UK participation in EU research programmes beyond the Horizon Europe deal already concluded in 2023. The data adequacy agreement, which allows the free flow of personal data between the UK and EU and was originally granted for four years, remains under review and has not been extended on a permanent basis — a source of significant uncertainty for tech companies and financial institutions operating across the Channel.
The Political Arithmetic
For Prime Minister Starmer, the summit represents a careful navigation of the political minefield that surrounds anything touching on Brexit. The package is substantial enough to be defended as genuinely improving the UK’s economic and security position, but carefully constructed to avoid triggering the “Brexit betrayal” narrative that would energise the Conservative opposition and Reform UK.
The reaction from the Opposition has been predictably divided. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, described the agreements as “opening the door to EU rule-making by the back door” — a criticism that constitutional lawyers and trade experts largely dismiss as overstated. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage was more colourful in his condemnation, characterising the summit as “the beginning of the end of Brexit.” Pro-European voices across the Liberal Democrats, the SNP and the Labour backbenches argued the government had not gone nearly far enough.
— Thomas Hargreaves, London Capital Post
