What does ‘greater ambition’ in UK-EU relations look like – and what are the chances of it?

Carolyn Rowe, Ed Turner, Tobias Hofelich and Jannike Wachowiak consider what a more ambitious UK-EU relationship could look like and the key challenges and opportunities it would present.

In May 2025, EU and UK leaders agreed a roadmap to soften the edges of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). At the time, the summit agenda was widely considered a pragmatic way forward, evidencing a new era of UK-EU relations under Keir Starmer, and part of a wider ambition to ‘reset’ that framework. But the world has not stood still. With Trump upending the global order and threatening European allies, the incrementalism that has characterised the rapprochement so far, looks a little like ‘fiddling while Rome burns’. How can the two sides be more ambitious in recalibrating this relationship?

While the stakes are certainly higher, it is far from certain whether the EU and the UK will be able to use the second proposed summit this summer to add new substance to their existing agreements. One key issue is bandwidth (or the lack thereof). Officials on both sides are mainly focused on implementing the Common Understanding agreed at last year’s summit. Following a slow start in the second half of last year, EU and UK officials are now getting into the meat of talks on a food and drinks deal and work towards the linking of their emission trading systems. These talks are deeply technical and, whilst there has been some squabbling over the finer detail, agreement should be possible. But on the much-touted youth experience scheme, particularly regarding university tuition fees, the negotiating partners remain far apart. Unless a landing zone can be found, the whole ‘reset’ could still come tumbling down: the EU has linked a solution on youth mobility to other areas where the UK is demandeur.

Another issue is around who takes initiative. The EU sees the ball as being in the UK’s court: i.e. if the UK wants a different relationship, it is up to them to make a clear ‘ask’. As the Commission’s chief spokesperson put it as recently as February, the forthcoming 2026 summit will be ‘the occasion to discuss with UK what, exactly, they have in mind, and how they propose to go about it’.

It is far from clear, however, that UK’s proposals would fly in Brussels. While the Chancellor’s Mais lecture identified deeper UK-EU relations as one of the UK’s biggest opportunities for economic growth, the government’s desire to pick and choose access to some areas of the single market (while rejecting the free movement of people and regular financial contributions à la Switzerland) is likely to be met with little enthusiasm in Brussels.

One way forward would be for the UK to present proposals which align directly with the EU’s stated ambition to strengthen relations with the UK on issues such as energy, people-to-people contacts, resilience and security. This is most likely in the deepening of UK-EU defence cooperation. Of all of the many challenges facing the EU at present it is on defence, primarily, where the UK is seen as part of the solution.

This could mean negotiating an agreement on the Ukraine loan which will be open to purchases from third countries who either have a SAFE agreement or are ‘providing significant financial and military support to Ukraine’ and agree to share ‘fair and proportionate financial contribution to the costs arising from borrowing’. A successful agreement would restore confidence and prepare the ground for a resumption of the collapsed SAFE talks.

On resilience, there is much more that could be done to coordinate policies and approaches in areas like supply chain security, investment screenings, and critical infrastructure. The UK could work with the EU towards greater ‘resilience’ as a wider European project, in which a broad alliance of like-minded EU partners such as the UK, Canada, Australia and Norway are incorporated into these new frameworks on a structured basis. A more ambitious agenda could focus on enhanced coordination in areas such as supply chain security, investment screening, and critical infrastructure. The people-to-people dimension of the relationship could also be strengthened. EU officials have indicated an interest in seeing UK participation in Creative Europe, an EU programme that supports cultural projects and the mobility of creatives.

Timing is crucial. Partly because of the rapidly evolving global context and partly because of domestic factors which, otherwise, might block progress. On the EU side, the negotiations on the next Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF) will take up EU bandwidth throughout 2026 and into 2027. So, too, will the 2027 French Presidential Elections. What is more, EU member states are currently debating policies with potentially far-reaching consequences for the UK: ‘Made in EU’ targets could, in the future, shut out certain British products and technologies from European supply chains. There is never a perfect time to move forward on UK-EU relations, but these externalities create urgency from the British perspective.

On the UK side, no significant advance in the UK-EU relationship will happen unless the Prime Minister decides to throw his political weight behind it and make the case at home and in Brussels. Currently, Keir Starmer’s government is cautious, but worries about fragmentation to the left, or even a leadership contest with candidates outbidding each other to appeal to a pro-European party membership, may change the dynamic.

No matter who leads Labour, forging a genuinely strategic partnership that matches the geopolitical challenges of the moment will require political direction and courage, as well as a willingness to take the conversation to Brussels and member states. With this in mind, the months leading up to the next summit will be a stress test for the seriousness of the Prime Minister’s EU ‘reset’ ambitions.

By Carolyn Rowe, Head of Department, Society & Politics at Aston University and Co-Director of the Aston Centre for Europe; Ed Turner, Reader in Politics at Aston University and Co-Director of the Aston Centre for Europe and acting chair of the International Association for the Study of German Politics; Tobias Hofelich, Research Associate, Aston University; and Jannike Wachowiak, Research Associate, UK in a Changing Europe.

This blog draws on a series of roundtables organised by the Aston Centre for Europe and UK in a Changing Europe in March 2026. The discussions were supported by funding from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).