'A lot of arguing to be done': What's at stake in the upcoming EU-UK summit?
Despite the new narrative, “this summit is really about taking forward some negotiations that were launched at EU-UK summit in May 2025, so the agenda is quite modest, and even that is proving quite challenging to get over the line,” Ian Bond, Deputy Director of the Centre for European Reform, a think tank in London and Brussels, told The Local.
“Both the UK and the EU will try to portray the summit as a success, but the reality is there’s still quite a lot of arguing to be done”, he said.
...Ian Bond says that the sanitary and phytosanitary agreement is “probably the easiest” to achieve. The agreement will remove trade barriers in food and agricultural products as the UK will commit to adopt the EU's rulebook in the sector.
The UK participation in the EU emissions trading scheme and electricity market should also be agreed. “Both sides want energy trading,” Bond says.
“The offshore wind infrastructure in the North Sea could serve both the UK and the EU, and one of the advantages of being in different time zones is that the peak hours are slightly different on the two sides of the Channel, so there is a benefit to both sides in being able to shift generating capacity back and forth to meet those different peak times,” he added.
...“This is a problem for both the UK government and universities because British universities are heavily reliant on the fact that overseas students pay much more than home students. If tens of thousands EU students pay lower fees, that could create a hole in their budget that the government might have to fill,” Bond explains.
...Bond says that talks around the summit “reflect something about the UK's attitude towards the EU that dates back to the 1970s”.
“A lot of people in the UK saw the EU as a trade bloc rather than a political union. The British have tended to see that with the EU much more as a commercial relationship than an emotional relationship, whereas youth mobility, free movement of labour in the single market, and the Erasmus+ programme are partly economic, but also partly about creating a sense of belonging to a single community,” he argued.
“If the EU and the UK are able to finalise all the agreements of the past and a few more forward leaning issues, that will create a good atmosphere for Andy Burnham to launch a national conversation on the EU relationship,” he said