First 20,000 places in UK-EU youth mobility scheme to open in January

Applications for the first UK-EU youth mobility scheme will open on 12 January, British and European officials confirmed on Friday, with 20,000 places available in each direction in the first year and the quota rising to 50,000 from 2028 if both sides agree the pilot has worked.

The scheme, agreed in principle at the UK-EU summit in May 2025 and negotiated in detail over the past 17 months, will allow people aged 18 to 30 to live, work and study on the other side of the Channel for up to two years. Applicants will need to show savings of about £2,500, hold health insurance and will pay a fee of £350 in the UK or €320 in the EU. They will not be eligible for most benefits and will pay the NHS surcharge at the reduced rate that applies to students.

The places will be divided among the 27 EU member states by population, with Germany, France, Italy and Spain receiving the largest allocations. Officials in Brussels said demand was expected to exceed supply “several times over” and that places would be allocated by lottery rather than on a first-come basis.

“This is the first time since 2020 that a young person in Lyon or Leipzig will be able to come to Britain simply because they want to, and the first time a young Briton will be able to do the same in return,” a European Commission official said. “It is a small scheme. It is also a very large signal.”

The agreement was one of the most contested items in the reset of relations between London and Brussels. The EU originally sought an uncapped scheme with four-year stays and home-fee status for students at British universities; the UK insisted on a numerical cap, a two-year limit and full international fees. Downing Street has been at pains to describe the result as a “youth experience scheme” rather than a return to free movement, and the places will count within the government’s net migration figures.

Universities and the hospitality industry welcomed the announcement but said the numbers were too small to make a difference to labour shortages. UKHospitality estimates that about 60,000 EU workers left the sector between 2020 and 2023 and have not been replaced. “Twenty thousand people across the whole economy is a rounding error,” said one trade body official. “It is a start, and we will take it.”

The opposition said the scheme was “free movement by instalments” and that the government had conceded a cap it would be unable to hold. Polling for the Daily Meridian in September found 61% of voters supported a youth scheme with the EU, including 44% of those who voted to leave in 2016.

In Lille, Camille Rousseau, 23, a trainee pastry chef who has twice been refused a UK visa, said she had already set an alarm for 12 January. “My sister did a year in Edinburgh in 2017 and it changed her life,” she said. “I was told that door was closed. Now it is open a crack. I am going through it.”