The UK has never turned its back on the world stage when our people and our allies need us to act. Now, once again, our country needs strong, patriotic and principled leadership.

Since 2016, the trust between the UK and the EU has been severely tested. It is not in the interests of the UK or the EU that this relationship remains strained. For the benefit of the British people, our economy, our standing in the world and in response to aggressive foreign actors, the next Government must work to reset our relationship with our closest neighbours and strongest allies.

Key Recommendations:

• Promote peace and democracy throughout the world by working closely with all our allies, including those closest to us on the continent of Europe.
• Promote a pragmatic foreign policy which has at its heart the UK working in much closer collaboration with all our European neighbours.
• Recognise that public opinion is shifting since the 2016 Brexit debate, and to work towards a closer future working relationship with Europe.
• Commit to the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Since the referendum in 2016, people have changed their minds on Brexit. In 2022, YouGov found that among Leave voters who have changed their minds, 25% have done so because they have “seen things get worse”. 19% have changed their minds because of the “state of the economy and rising prices”. Meanwhile, 11% have changed their mind because they feel that they were “lied to” during the campaign.

Now more than ever, a new Parliament and the next Government must be upfront and honest about the realities. We owe it to the British people to take stock of the impact of that decision 8 years on and 4 years after the end of the transition period.

Key Recommendations:

• Press the new Government to commission a detailed, independent assessment of the costs and benefits of the UK being outside:
  • The European single market.
  • The customs union.
  • Other aspects of EU membership: including but not limited to the Common Agricultural Policy, the Common Fisheries Policy and co-operation on foreign policy, justice and security.
• Assess any international trading gains Britain is achieving in new global markets since detaching ourselves from the customs union.
• Publish the findings of the commission in a ‘State of the Nation’ report with a clear policy pathway to remedy any damaging impacts caused by Brexit.

UK civil society, charities, businesses and industrial bodies have warned of the erosion of standards and rights from which we benefitted as members of the European Union when they were introduced. In 2023, the Retained EU Law Bill threatened to give power to Government Ministers to delete, amend or keep laws that originated in the EU with little scrutiny or oversight.

Thankfully the worst aspects of that failed, but as time passes the UK diverges more and more with laws and standards in the EU. There has been “notable divergence on climate and environmental standards,” and “significantly fewer new restrictions on chemicals and pesticides in Great Britain than the EU since Brexit.”

Key Recommendations:

• Reverse the erosion of both standards and rights since our departure from the EU.
• Revoke the Retained EU Law Act 2023 and replace it with a legally binding minimum guarantee of the standards and regulations the UK helped develop while a member of the European Union.
• Ensure ongoing regulatory and standards alignment with the EU on key issues where it is in the UK’s interest to align – like medicines, aviation, chemicals, food standards, data/AI, and others.
• Progress the proposal in the European Movement’s Save Our Standards campaign of improving Parliamentary scrutiny of regulatory divergence.

In pursuit of a ‘Hard Brexit’, the UK left a vast series of European agencies and organisations when it left the EU on 31 January 2020. Many of these agencies and programmes provided meaningful benefits to the UK.

The UK is being seriously and unnecessarily damaged by the decision to leave institutions like Euratom, the European Medicines Agency, the European Environment Agency and programmes like Horizon Europe, Erasmus+ and Creative Europe.

The current government belatedly recognised the need for the UK to associate with the Horizon Europe programme, funding scientific research into groundbreaking cancer treatments and efforts to meet the climate emergency.

But Erasmus+ is equally important and the UK’s absence from it is depriving British young people of learning and development opportunities.

Key Recommendations:

• Complete the Young European Movement’s campaign objective to rejoin Erasmus+.
• Accept the invitation by the European Commission to negotiate a Youth Mobility Scheme allowing our young people opportunities to study, work, or train in an EU member state.
• Pursue the closest possible working relationship with the European Medicines Agency to try and avoid further delays in access to new treatments.
• Call for a new Government to begin negotiating a veterinary and food safety agreement with the EU to ease trade friction.
• Rejoin the European Environment Agency.
• Seek deeper agreements with the EU across the board from defence to food safety to fighting climate change.
• Accomplish the European Movement’s Face the Music campaign goal by securing reciprocal access for British contractors, musicians and performers travelling to the EU for work – and their counterparts from the EU working in the UK – in the form of a cultural touring visa.
• Realign the UK as an associate member of European agencies.

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