Ministers are prepared to spend as much as £450m a year to give EU students discounted university fees, but only if Brussels allows the UK access to its Made in Europe industrial programme, officials say.
Illustrative image · Source: Guardian Business · UK offers £450m a year for EU student fees in exchange for Made in Europe access · Rights unverified · Reencoded as WebP with metadata removed. Display may be resized or cropped.
Ministers are prepared to spend as much as £450m a year to give students from the EU discounted university fees, the Guardian has learned, but only if Brussels allows the UK access to its Made in Europe industrial programme. The UK government has drawn up plans to allow students arriving from the continent pay the same fees as British students, sources say, and is willing to spend hundreds of millions of pounds compensating universities to do so.
British officials insist, however, they will only make concessions on fees if the EU allows Britain entry to its proposed protectionist industrial scheme, which will impose trade restrictions on countries outside the bloc. One person with knowledge of the talks is quoted on the trade-off.
Sources have told the Guardian the government is willing to concede on fees and is prepared to pay cash-strapped universities for the income they will lose. Two sources who have seen the costings have told the Guardian that under the most expensive scenario, which involves reducing fees to the same level as domestic students’ and very high levels of demand, the government could end up paying £450m a year. Another source said the true cost was likely to be lower, while a government official described the figure as “speculative”.
Member states are pushing for firm language on fees while the UK holds out for guarantees on Made in Europe. EU officials say they want their students to pay fees of just over £9,000 a year rather than international fees, which can rise above £60,000. Negotiations were briefly brought to a standstill this year over the demand.
The first draft of a joint statement will be presented to EU ambassadors on Wednesday with room for text to be added or deleted up to 20 November, and negotiators have been working towards a summit on 20 November.
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