A year since the EU-UK summit: where are we now?

One year on from the inaugural UK-EU summit, Hussein Kassim reflects on what has (or has not) been acheived since and what this means for the UK-EU relationship.

A year after EU leaders met Keir Starmer at Lancaster House on 19 May 2025, the optimism that accompanied the conclusion of the talks has faded. The first summit since the UK’s departure from the EU followed the Labour Party’s much vaunted manifesto pledge to reset relations with the EU. The signing of three texts looked set to open a new era of constructive and cooperative relations, with EU leaders welcoming a roadmap towards wider cooperation, while in the UK hopes were high about the possibility of moving towards to an even closer relationship with the EU in pharmaceuticals, chemicals and electric vehicles.

From one point of view, much was achieved at the summit and in its follow up. An agreement on fisheries has been signed, the UK will return to Erasmus+ from 2027, and negotiations continue between the two sides on an agrifood and trade agreement, energy cooperation, linking their two emissions trading schemes, and a Youth Experience Scheme – YES. More broadly, a comprehensive draft treaty on Gibraltar has been finalised and the Commission renewed its data adequacy decisions concerning the UK.

But so far there has also been at least one notable casualty. In security, where the two sides had signed a Security and Defence Partnership, the UK’s attempt to join SAFE (Security Action for Europe) – the EU’s flagship €150bn defence fund – collapsed when the two sides found themselves wide apart on the level of the UK’s financial contribution.

Add to that the several areas where negotiations have been stumbling and the picture is somewhat less promising. On agrifood and trade, for example, although the fundamentals, such as dynamic alignment with EU rules, have been agreed, the UK continues to seek exemptions. On electricity, the UK has been refusing to accept that, in return for access to the EU single market, it should like Norway and Switzerland contribute to the EU cohesion fund – a policy aimed at reducing regional economic disparities within the EU. Meanwhile, on YES, which is the EU’s main ask, the UK is refusing to allow EU students to pay tuition fees at the same level as domestic students and wants to cap the number of young Europeans coming into the UK. In neither electricity nor youth experience, London argues, were the concessions that the EU is demanding prefigured by the May 2025 agreement. Since the EU considers that agreement on SPS and emissions trading will benefit the UK more than the EU, it may yet decide that the UK will need to meet EU demands on YES to make the overall package acceptable.

More broadly, the UK finds it hard to understand why the EU will not agree on measures that in London’s mind would produce benefits for both parties. It sees the EU as backward looking and wonders why the EU cannot show more flexibility given the wider interests it shares with the UK.

The EU, for its part, has been baffled by elements of the UK’s approach. Since member states consider the UK to be in a better economic condition than some EU countries, they are not persuaded when the UK claims the state of the British economy prevents it from paying more. Similarly, the EU has limited sympathy when the UK invokes domestic debates about immigration when the issue is also sensitive in parts of the EU. More generally, the EU finds it difficult to reconcile the UK’s expressed desire for closer relations with what it perceives as the UK’s hypertransactionalist approach to the negotiations. Although much has changed since the days of Boris Johnson, the EU remains unsatisfied with some aspects of the UK’s implementation of rules under the Windsor Agreement. The monitoring and inspection of goods between GB and Northern Ireland, where the EU is concerned about products from the UK finding their way into the single market, is a particular issue. The view on the EU side is that if a party cannot implement an existing agreement, there little ground on which to trust it to comply with a new agreement.

What room there is for manoeuvre remains to be seen. Although it has shown signs of flexibility in its approach to the UK, the EU is not about to abandon its existential principles in regard to the single market. Nor is it likely to offer concessions to the UK that could trigger requests from other third countries to amend their agreements with the EU. Moreover, since the EU is largely satisfied with the Withdrawal Agreement and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, it needs to be persuaded of the benefits of further add-ons. As member states have differing perspectives on the desirability of a closer relationship, often based on geographical proximity, there is also a question of whether the overall gains to the EU from an agreement with the UK will be substantial enough and whether all member states will see the benefit. Further, the EU side is wary of what happens next in British politics. UK domestic uncertainty has led the EU to pay particular attention to crafting safeguard provisions and conflict resolution clauses.

On the UK side, government rhetoric has changed noticeably over the past few months. Pointing to the costs of Brexit and the economic damage it has caused the UK, both the PM and the Chancellor have called for a closer relationship with the EU. Most recently, in the wake of Labour Party losses in the May local elections, Starmer declared that the UK should be ‘at the heart of Europe’. How this can be reconciled with Labour’s red lines or translated into an impetus to successfully conclude the current negotiations remains uncertain. The impact of a possible leadership contest on the government’s position is also unclear.

In short, the signs twelve months after the summit are mixed at best. The absence of the announcement of a date for a second summit bears eloquent testimony to the distance between the two sides that remains. In addition, unanticipated legal complexities and controversies concerning the mechanisms the government will need to adopt to make parts of an agreement work appear themselves to have opened a pandora’s box.

By Professor Hussein Kassim, Professor of European Public Policy and Administration, University of Warwick.