BRUSSELS — Cheap packages entering the EU will be charged a tax of €3 per item from next July, the bloc’s 27 finance ministers agreed on Friday. The deal effectively ends the tax-free status for packages worth less than €150. The flat tax will apply for each different type of item in a package. If one package contains 10 plushy toys, the duty is applied once. But if the shipment also contains a charging cable, another €3 is added. The flood of untaxed and often unsafe goods prompted the European Commission to propose a temporary solution for the packages under €150 a month ago. This “de minimis” rule allows exporters like Shein and Temu to send products directly to consumers, often bypassing scrutiny. The EU has already received more packages in the first nine months of 2025 than in the entire previous year, when the counter hit 4.6 billion. French Finance Minister Roland Lescure called it “a literal invasion of parcels in Europe last year,” which would have hit “7, 8, 9 billion in the coming years if nothing was done.” An EU official told POLITICO earlier this month that at some airports, up to 80 percent of such packages arriving don’t comply with EU safety rules. This creates a huge workload for customs officials, a growing pile of garbage, and health risks from unsafe toys and kitchen items. EU countries have already agreed to formally abolish the de-minimis loophole, but taxing all items based on their actual value and product type will require more data exchange. That will only be possible once an ambitious reform of the bloc’s Customs Union, currently under negotiation, is completed by 2028. The €3 flat tax is the temporary solution to cover the period until then. The rising popularity of web shops like Shein and Temu, which both operate out of China is fueling this flood. France suspended access to Shein’s online platform this month. This €3 EU-wide tax will be distinct from the so-called handling fee that France has proposed as a part of its national budget to relieve the costs on customs for dealing with the same flood of packages. Klara Durand and Camille Gijs contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — Britain’s top Europe minister defended a decision to keep the U.K. out of the EU’s customs union — despite sounding bullish on a speedy reset of ties with the bloc in the first half of 2026. Speaking to POLITICO in Brussels where he was attending talks with Maroš Šefčovič, the EU trade commissioner, Nick Thomas-Symonds said a non-binding British parliamentary vote on Tuesday on rejoining the tariff-free union — pushed by the Liberal Democrats, but supported by more than a dozen Labour MPs — risked reviving bitter arguments about Brexit. Thomas-Symonds described the gambit by the Lib Dems — which had the backing of one of Labour’s most senior backbenchers, Meg Hillier — as “Brexit Redux.” And he accused Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, of wanting “to go back to the arguments of the past.” The Lib Dems have drawn support from disillusioned Labour voters, partly inspired by the party’s more forthright position on moving closer to the EU. But Thomas-Symonds defended Labour’s manifesto commitment to remain outside the single market and the customs union. “The strategy that I and the government have been pursuing is based on our mandate from the general election of 2024, that we would not go back to freedom of movement, we would not go back to the customs union or the single market,” the British minister for European Union relations said. Thomas-Symonds said this remained a “forward-looking, ruthlessly pragmatic approach” that is “rooted in the challenges that Britain has in the mid 2020s.” He pointed out that post-Brexit Britain outside of the customs union has signed trade deals with India and the United States, demonstrating the “advantages of the negotiating freedoms Britain has outside the EU.” ‘GET ON WITH IT’ Speaking to POLITICO’s Anne McElvoy for the “Politics at Sam and Anne’s” podcast, out on Thursday, Thomas-Symonds was optimistic that a grand “reset” of U.K.-EU relations would progress more quickly in the new year. The two sides are trying to make headway on a host of areas including a youth mobility scheme and easing post-Brexit restrictions on food and drink exports. “I think if you look at the balance of the package and what I’m talking about in terms of the objective on the food and drink agreement, I think you can see a general timetable across this whole package,” he said. Pressed on whether this could happen in the first half of 2026,  the U.K. minister sounded upbeat: “I think the message from both of us to our teams will be to get on with it.”  The Brussels visit comes after talks over Britain’s potential entry into a major EU defense program known as SAFE broke down amid disagreement over how much money the U.K. would pay for access to the loans-for-arms scheme. The program is aimed at re-arming Europe more speedily to face the threat from Russia. Asked if the collapse of those talks showed the U.K. had miscalculated its ability to gain support in a crucial area of re-connection, Thomas-Symonds replied: “We do always impose a very strict value for money. What we would not do is contribute at a level that isn’t in our national interest.” The issued had “not affected the forward momentum in terms of the rest of the negotiation,” he stressed. YOUTH MOBILITY STANDOFF Thomas-Symonds is a close ally of Prime Minister Keir Starmer and has emboldened the under-fire British leader to foreground his pro-Europe credentials. The minister for European relations suggested his own elevation in the British government — he will now attend Cabinet on a permanent basis — was a sign of Starmer’s intent to focus on closer relations with Europe and tap into regret over a post-Brexit loss of business opportunities to the U.K. Fleshing out the details of a “youth mobility” scheme — which would allow young people from the EU and the U.K. to spend time studying, traveling, or working in each other’s countries — has been an insistent demand of EU countries, notably Germany and the Netherlands. Yet progress has foundered over how to prevent the scheme being regarded  as a back-door for immigration to the U.K. — and how exactly any restrictions on numbers might be set and implemented. Speaking to POLITICO, Thomas-Symonds hinted at British impatience to proceed with the program, while stressing: “It has to be capped, time-limited, and  it’ll be a visa-operated scheme. “Those are really important features, but I sometimes think on this you can end up having very dry discussion about the design when actually this is a real opportunity for young Brits and for young Europeans to live, work, study, enjoy other cultures.” The British government is sensitive to the charge that the main beneficiaries of the scheme will be students or better-off youngsters. “I’m actually really excited about this,” Thomas-Symonds said, citing his own working-class background and adding that he would have benefited from a chance to spend time abroad as a young man “And the thing that strikes me as well is making sure this is accessible to people from all different backgrounds,” he said. Details however still appear contentious: The EU’s position remains that the scheme should not be capped but should have a break clause in the event of a surge in numbers. Berlin in particular has been reluctant to accept the Starmer government’s worries that the arrangement might be seen as adding to U.K. immigration figures, arguing that British students who are outside many previous exchange programs would also be net beneficiaries.  Thomas-Symonds did not deny a stand-off, saying: “When there are ongoing talks about particular issues, I very much respect the confidentiality and trust on the ongoing talks.”  Britain’s most senior foreign minister, Yvette Cooper, on Wednesday backed a hard cap on the number of people coming in under a youth mobility scheme. She told POLITICO in a separate interview that such a scheme needs to be “balanced.” “The UK-EU relationship is really important and is being reset, and we’re seeing cooperation around a whole series of different things,” she said. We also, at the same time, need to make sure that issues around migration are always properly managed and controlled.” A U.K. official later clarified that Cooper is keen to see an overall cap on numbers. BOOZY GIFT As negotiations move from the technical to the political level this week, Thomas-Symonds sketched out plans for a fresh Britain-EU summit in Brussels when the time is right. “In terms of the date, I just want to make sure that we have made sufficient progress, to demonstrate that progress in a summit,” Nick Thomas-Symonds said. “I think that the original [post-Brexit] Trade and Cooperation Agreement did not cover services in the way that it should have done,” he added. “We want to move forward on things like mutual recognition of professional qualifications.” Thomas-Symonds, one of the government’s most ardent pro-Europeans, meanwhile told POLITICO he had forged a good relationship with “Maroš” (Šefčovič) – and had even brought him a Christmas present of a bottle of House of Commons whisky. “So there’s no doubt that there is that trajectory of closer U.K.-EU cooperation,” he quipped. Dan Bloom and Esther Webber contributed reporting.

LONDON — Keir Starmer is promising British voters he’ll fix the Brexit-shaped hole in the U.K. economy, but Brussels appears to have quite enough on its plate. Days after Britain’s grim growth prospects were laid bare in the U.K. budget, the country’s PM gave two speeches promising closer ties with the European Union and elevated his EU point person, Nick Thomas-Symonds, to the Cabinet. “We have to keep moving towards a closer relationship with the EU, and we have to be grown-up about that, to accept that that will require trade-offs,” Starmer said on Monday.   But European leaders are already grappling with packed in-trays as they look for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine and confront their own domestic economic challenges — and skepticism remains as to how much room for maneuver the British PM actually has.  Starmer’s political red lines — no customs union, no single market, and no return to freedom of movement — remain in place, and ministers continue to stress that a return to full EU membership remains off the table. Even Starmer’s existing EU “reset” agenda — which aims to walk back some of the harder edges of Boris Johnson’s Brexit settlement — is not all going to plan. A push to join the EU’s SAFE loans-for-arms scheme crashed last week after the two sides failed to agree on how much money the U.K. would pay. “The same ‘how much should the U.K. contribute?’ question has been slowing down the actual implementation of basically all the reset topics,” said one EU diplomat who was not authorized to speak on the record. Despite plenty of talk in London about closer ties, the forum for putting fresh topics on the agenda would be the EU-U.K. summit that is due next year. But a date has yet to be set for that gathering. “Nobody is talking about the next summit here yet. I’m not saying it isn’t going to happen, it’s just a question of bandwidth,” another EU diplomat said. “For us the focus now is to work through our existing commitments and finalize those deals, start implementing them and then showing that the deals are bringing value. That takes time,” a third diplomat said. LIMITED SCOPE  The problem for Starmer is that his existing plan to rebuild EU ties is unlikely to move the dial on U.K. economic growth. Economists at the Centre for European Reform reckon that the government’s reset package — if delivered in full — is worth somewhere between 0.3 percent and 0.7 per cent of U.K. GDP over a decade.   Meanwhile, academics at the Bank of England and Stanford University calculate that the economic hit from Brexit could be as high as 8 percent of GDP over a similar period. “It is striking how frequently the chancellor and prime minister will now lament the costs of Brexit, without making any suggestions on how to change the status quo,” said Joël Reland, research fellow at the U.K. In A Changing Europe think tank.  “This could be read as a slow creep towards a breach of their red lines, but I suspect it is mostly about domestic political management. They are in a sticky economic situation and Brexit is a convenient thing to blame. I don’t think they’d be brave enough to risk a manifesto breach on Brexit, but I’d be surprised if ‘no single market or customs union’ is in the 2029 manifesto,” Reland said.  One British government official stressed that Labour’s red lines remain in place — but added: “We don’t think we’re at those red lines yet.”  BREAKING THE TABOO  Labour’s previous reluctance to talk about Brexit was born of a fear of upsetting Leave-leaning swing voters whom the party wanted to win over in the last election.  But that started to change over the summer.  Thomas-Symonds, the minister in charge of delivering the reset, went on the attack in a speech hosted by the Spectator, a right-wing magazine. Parties pledging to reverse Starmer’s reset were offering “more red tape, mountains of paperwork, and a bureaucratic burden,” he argued. To the surprise of Downing Street aides, the attacks landed well and drew a line between the government’s agenda and that of Reform UK boss Nigel Farage — the longstanding Brexiteer dominating in the polls — and Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch.  It emboldened Starmer and his lieutenants. Rachel Reeves, the U.K.’s chief finance minister, used her speech at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool to talk up the benefits of improved cross-border mobility for the economy.   Ahead of last week’s difficult budget stuffed with tax rises, she waded in further, damning the effects of a “chaotic Brexit.” While the new rhetoric has yet to be backed up by a shift in policy, there are signs that some of Starmer’s close allies are starting to think bigger.  Rejoining the EU customs union was reportedly raised as an option by Starmer’s economic advisor ahead of the budget — but was rejected. “There are definitely people who have been pushing at this for a long time,” one person with knowledge of conversations in government said.  “I don’t think that will be that surprising to people, because if your primary goal allegedly is growth then that’s one of the easiest levers you can pull. Most economists would agree — it’s the politics that’s stopping it.”  Pressed on the prospect of Britain’s applying to rejoin the customs union on Wednesday, Health Secretary Wes Streeting did not explicitly rule out the idea but stressed the government’s policy was about “new partnerships and new relationships, not relitigating the past.” If Starmer opts for a risky manifesto-busting push to rejoin the customs union, diplomats say even that is unlikely to be a quick fix for the British PM.  “It would take time. Just consider how slow has been so far the progress on SPS, ETS and Erasmus,” the first diplomat quoted above said. “As of now, the U.K. needs the EU to spur its growth, not the other way around.”

In a luxury Saudi hotel some 3,000 miles away from her economic woes, Britain’s Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivered a plucky pitch to some of the wealthiest people on the planet. “I believe that countries are successful when they are open and trading — I think that’s good for productivity because competition spurs productivity, growth,” she told business leaders at the Fortune Global Forum last month. “And in a small and open economy like Britain’s … we want our businesses to be able to access global markets.” With this in mind, the chancellor said, Britain was striking trade deals with the EU, the U.S., as well as fast-growing economies like India, as she teased “big opportunities” from an upcoming free trade agreement with Gulf countries. With a difficult budget looming, the chancellor has increasingly turned her gaze overseas in her elusive search for economic growth. And with the Office for Budget Responsibility expected to downgrade the U.K.’s productivity outlook before the budget, Reeves is urging the fiscal watchdog to positively “score” new trade deals according to how much growth they might deliver. But her efforts may be in vain. Far from being the magic bullet that will reinvigorate the economy, the benefits of trade deals may take years to materialize — and some government claims appear to be overstated, experts have told POLITICO. EU ‘RESET’ HOPES By the government’s estimation, its plans to “reset” its relationship with the European Union will add nearly £9 billion to the U.K. economy by 2040, equivalent to a GDP boost of 0.3 percent. Key elements include deals on agrifood, energy trading, and a youth mobility scheme.  Separate analysis by John Springford, an associate fellow at the Centre for European Reform in London, is more optimistic, predicting a GDP boost of between 0.3 and 0.7 percent over ten years as a result of the agreement. The biggest uplifts, he claims, would come from a youth mobility deal.  But negotiations on key elements of the deal have only just begun, and Springford admits details are still “a bit sketchy.” As a result, he says, it would be difficult for the OBR to accept Reeves’ ask to score these deals, which would also take a long time to play out. Even if the government’s estimates are met, he added, the deal will do little to reverse the overall damage caused by Brexit, which the OBR estimates will reduce the U.K.’s long-run productivity by 4 percent. “The damage caused by Brexit can never be significantly repaired without getting rid of one or all of the government’s ‘red lines’,” he continued, in reference to Labour’s refusal to rejoin the single market or customs union.  In recent months the chancellor has talked about the impact of Brexit on the economy, but has suggested this impact can be offset by the reset deal, as well as by trade deals with non-EU countries. “There is no doubting that the impact of Brexit is severe and long lasting,” she said in an interview with Sky News in October, “and that is why we are trying to do trade deals around the world, with the U.S., India, but most importantly with the EU, so that our exporters here in Britain have a chance to sell things made here all around the world.” Guests at the Fortune Global Forum 2025 Gala Dinner. | Cedric Ribeiro/Getty Images for Fortune Media But Ahmet Kaya, principal economist at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, said the EU deal was “more symbolic than transformative.”  “It slightly eases checks on agri-food products, which should help certain sectors, but the macroeconomic effect is minimal considering that the government’s impact estimate is just £9 billion — which is cumulative gain over time — relative to the size of the £3.6 trillion economy.” INDIA FREE TRADE AGREEMENT Reeves will also be pinning her growth hopes on the U.K.’s recently completed free trade agreement with India, which the government predicts will boost U.K. GDP by 0.13 percent, worth £4.8 billion a year.  The deal will ultimately see India remove tariffs on up to 90 percent of U.K. exports and cut India’s average effective tariffs on U.K. goods from roughly 15 percent to 3 percent, with significant benefits for Britain’s automotive and Scotch whisky exports. But Sophie Hale, principal economist at the Resolution Foundation, said it could take 10 to 15 years for the full effects of the deal to be felt, partly because many tariff reductions will be introduced gradually and are subject to quotas. “Given the OBR is looking over a five-year window, we really aren’t going to expect a big impact,” she said. “Even if it was spread evenly, you’re maybe getting less than half of that by the end of the forecast, because it has to actually be implemented.” The deal is “definitely worth having,” Hale added. “But in terms of … OBR productivity growth forecasts or shifting the dial on U.K. growth, it’s pretty small and a lot of those impacts are going to be delayed.”  TARIFF TERRORS Reeves will also be hoping that the U.K.’s Economic Prosperity Deal with the U.S. — announced with much fanfare in May — will have gone some way in cushioning the impact of President Donald Trump’s punitive tariff regime. The deal saw the U.K. hit with 10 percent baseline tariffs on most goods, with reduced duties for automotives, steel and aluminum, and increased market access for agricultural exports.  While this gave Britain a comparative advantage over most other countries, it has still left the U.K. in a weaker trade position with the U.S. than a year ago. According to NIESR’s latest forecast, U.S. tariffs have reduced U.K. growth by around 0.1 percentage points this year and 0.2 percentage points next year.  “That’s a smaller drag than expected in March, reflecting the more moderate global spill-overs from tariffs, but the overall impact remains negative,” said Kaya. But even this remains uncertain. Like the EU deal agreed earlier this year, much of the EPD remains under negotiation, including pharmaceutical tariffs, which makes it difficult to “score” in terms of its economic impact. MAKING TRADE DEALS WORK Even when trade deals are fully agreed and implemented, their economic impacts are not guaranteed, and it is sometimes an uphill struggle to get businesses to actually make use of them.  “Trade deals have the potential to support economic growth, but their impact does not appear overnight and needs time and support to make it happen,” noted George Riddell, managing director of the Goyder trade consultancy.  “Businesses need to make connections with local customers, understand local regulatory requirements and establish partnerships to help with relevant legal, tax and customs procedures.” In the government’s trade strategy, published over the summer, the Department for Business and Trade committed to overhauling how it supports U.K. businesses and provides export advice through a “one-stop-shop.”  “While the new website is a substantial improvement on what was there before, more needs to be done to get businesses using it,” said Riddell.  Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves will be hoping that the U.K.’s Economic Prosperity Deal with the U.S. will have gone some way in cushioning the impact of President Donald Trump’s punitive tariff regime. | Pool photo by Jordan Pettitt/AFP via Getty Images Trade Minister Chris Bryant acknowledged this issue in a recent speech, telling businesses the estimates of the economic impact of trade deals could only be realized “if businesses are ambitious enough to exploit these opportunities.”  “It’s not just about signing free trade agreements,” he said at a pitching event for exporters earlier this month. “We can sign FTAs, we can do all that negotiating … But it’s exploiting those FTAs once they’ve been signed that is really important and will actually drive growth.” Looking back at the U.K.’s first post-Brexit trade deals, David Henig, director of the UK Trade Policy Project at the European Centre for International Political Economy think tank, says there is little sign of material impact. “There is currently no evidence that the new trade deals with Australia and New Zealand have affected the U.K. economy in any meaningful sense,” he said, adding there was “nothing that indicates any permanent increase in trade so far.” ‘BEATING THE FORECASTS’ As the budget approaches, Reeves’ growth ambitions look increasingly uncertain. The OBR has downgraded the U.K.’s productivity outlook, potentially increasing government borrowing by £14 billion and £20 billion. Just last week, figures from the Office for National Statistics show that U.K. GDP fell unexpectedly by 0.1 percent in September. Publicly, at least, the chancellor has remained upbeat. “My job as chancellor is to try and beat those forecasts,” she said last month, “and what we’re doing with those trade deals with India, the U.S. and the EU, the investments that we’ve secured, including from big tech companies in the U.K., shows that we have a huge amount to offer as a place to grow a business, to start and scale a business.  “We’ll continue to secure those investments in all parts of Britain, to create those good jobs, paying wages and to boost our productivity, which means that we will start to see those numbers coming through in economic growth and prosperity for working people.” James Fitzgerald contributed to this report.

LILLE, France — France’s plan for winning the race to host a European customs watchdog has become clear: Set the pace for the bidding war. POLITICO was among 20 officials from all over Europe on a trip to the northern French city on Tuesday for an in-person look at Lille’s bid to host the new European Union Customs Authority. In what felt like a joyful school trip, visitors toured the agency’s office, where the authority’s future 250 employees would work — a state-of-the-art white building adjacent to the train station and Lille’s Flemish old town. They then took a stroll in the multilingual European school where future officials could send their kids. Invitees even got a guided tour of the city center and tasted local delicacies during a lunch that one of the attendees described as “the heaviest of my life.” Though other cities like Warsaw, Málaga and Porto have made their candidacies official, no other potential host has started this early and campaigned so hard to date (bids are due Nov. 27). France is also likely to benefit from the fact that it has taken a leading role in one of the most pressing issues facing customs authorities today: the flood of cheap goods from China. French officials this week launched a high-profile fight against Shein, moving to suspend the platform in France following allegations that the Chinese fast-fashion e-commerce giant was selling childlike sex dolls. Authorities also took the extraordinary step of inspecting more than 200,000 parcels from Shein that had arrived at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport.  Official from allover the EU got a taste of French hospitality as they visited Lille. | Giorgio Leali/POLITICO France led the charge to tax purchases made on platforms like Shein, Temu and AliExpress by proposing a €2 levy on any small parcel worth more than €150 coming from outside the bloc. The EU is considering following suit. “The advantage of hosting the authority in Lille is also that France is the country that has realized the most the danger coming from Chinese e-commerce platforms,” said Socialist member of the European Parliament François Kalfon as he walked through Lille city center. Hosting the customs authority would create “a favorable ecosystem” to make sure that French activism on customs control turns into a European approach, he said.  Kalfon added, the fact that France already hosts several other European Union agencies — there are five on French soil, plus the European Parliament in Strasbourg — shouldn’t count against the bid. Lille has some geographic advantages compared to those other three cities officially in the running. It is just over 100 kilometers from Brussels, and well connected to many major airports and harbors — a key asset for an authority charged with monitoring customs data from all over the bloc to keep out unsafe and illicit products. Still, Paris is taking no chances after two recent stinging defeats in bids to host the bloc’s anti-money laundering authority and its medicines agency. France wants to host the future authority in a state-of-the-art new building next to Lille train station. | Giorgio Leali/POLITICO Laurent Saint-Martin, who recently served as both trade and budget minister for France, along with former WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy, are leading the bid. Saint-Martin told POLITICO while walking down the steps of what he hopes will be the future customs authority HQ that the key was to get out of the starting blocks early, reaching out to other countries and MEPs — even if the exact voting procedure hasn’t been settled on yet. Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Croatia could soon launch their own bids for hosting the customs authority, according to several officials with direct knowledge of their plans who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to comment. And candidate countries are lobbying to host the it in chats with officials from EU member countries. But France’s decision to get the jump out of the gate appears to be bearing fruit. Several non-French officials on the trip, likewise granted anonymity to discuss an ongoing competitive bid without official authorization, said the were impressed by the bid. “This is the right moment,” one of them said. “The others are still a few steps behind.”

LONDON — For Britain’s government, it’s a no-go. For the Greens’ new leader Zack Polanski, it’s a must. The end of free movement of people with the EU has been a “disaster” for the U.K. that should be urgently reversed, Polanski told POLITICO — in his first major intervention on EU policy. Elected leader of the left-wing environmentalist party last month, Polanski’s brand of “eco populism” is already cutting through with some voters. POLITICO’s polling average shows his party steadily climbing to 13 percent — more than double the 6 percent they won in last year’s general election. One outlier even shows them drawing level with Labour. While Polanski — a relative outsider who sits in London’s regional assembly rather than Westminster — has so far cut through by focusing on domestic policy, inequality and the cost of living, he’s now setting out his stall on Europe. Though Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has sought to reset relations with the EU, he’s done so within tight red lines designed to appeal to Brexit supporters: no re-entry to the single market, no rejoining the customs union, and absolutely no return to freedom of movement. Polanski has no such qualms, and he’s not impressed with the prime minister’s caution. “It all feels a little bit ‘meh,’ for want of a better description,” he told POLITICO of Starmer’s reset so far. “It doesn’t really feel like he has any kind of passionate vision of what the future looks like, or any real direction that he’s driving it in. He doesn’t really have a vision for this country. So how is he going to have a vision of what the future of Europe looks like?” ‘DISASTER’ In particular, the Green leader is unapologetic about a return to free movement of people — which ended in 2021. It’s an issue most politicians in Westminster won’t go anywhere near for fear of landing on the wrong side of voters annoyed about immigration. “The restriction on free movement has been a disaster,” he said, adding that it should be in the “first phase” of any rapprochement. “It’s interesting to see [Nigel Farage’s party] Reform banging on about immigration, but we know immigration has risen since Brexit. “It’s just risen from countries outside of Europe. So even on its own terms, Reform and the Brexit Party’s own project was a disaster by their own criteria. And I think free movement is really important, both for our citizens and citizens around Europe.” Though Keir Starmer has sought to reset relations with the EU, he’s done so within tight red lines designed to appeal to Brexit supporters. | Stefan Rousseau/PA Images via Getty Images Net migration to the U.K. was 431,000 in 2024 — significantly higher than rates in the 2010s when numbers were typically between 200,000 and 300,000. But despite welcoming more newcomers than ever, Brits have lost their right to move abroad within the EU. Polling commissioned by POLITICO shows voters aren’t impressed with the new system and are open to turning back the clock, if somewhat disinterested in the policy detail. Starmer’s EU reset, primed at a summit in May this year, involves negotiating a new agrifood deal with the EU to smooth trade in food, closer cooperation on energy, and a “youth experience” scheme that doesn’t restore free movement but would give a capped number of young people time-limited visas to live abroad. Polanski, however, thinks the government should go further on building ties with the EU in other areas. “I think rejoining the customs union is something we should be doing as soon as possible,” he said. “It’s just resulting in higher prices for people.” It’s a policy also backed by the opposition Liberal Democrats, with whom the Greens are bidding for disillusioned Labour voters. As for rejoining the bloc altogether? “Over longer term, absolutely we should be rejoining the European Union. But we’ve got to make sure that that conversation is a conversation all the public’s involved with. I think one of the reasons Brexit happened is because so many people feel like politics is done to them rather than with them,” he said. “I think Brexit was a catastrophic decision. I think it’s also important that politicians listen to the fact that the public made that decision, and I believe they made that decision because of the lack of investment in their communities and need and want of something different. I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone, though, who thinks that was a right decision that has made our communities any wealthier.” INTERNATIONALISM The Green leader told POLITICO that “really grim” plans by the Tories and Reform to leave the European Convention on Human Rights show “the slow march towards fascism that this country is on.” But he said the rightward drift across Europe is a reason to get stuck in, not to hang back. “I think there’s some really worrying trends across Europe, particularly around the far right, and we’re seeing the beginnings of some of those trends in our own country. I think any political party has a decision to make, which is: Do you stay isolationist and out of Europe and say, ‘Well, you know, they’re going right wing, so we’re not going to get involved.’ “Or do you say actually: International and indeed, socialist solidarity looks like working with left-wing or progressive movements across Europe in ways that look to reform Europe; to make sure that the entire project is moving in a direction that ultimately protects people’s freedom, protects the poorest communities across Europe, and is the best thing for our country, too.”

LONDON — British businesses trading with Europe face “more red tape, mountains of paperwork, and a bureaucratic burden” if the U.K.’s opposition parties tear up Keir Starmer’s new Brexit reset deal, a government minister will warn Wednesday. In a speech in Westminster, Nick Thomas-Symonds, who has been leading talks with Brussels for improved trade terms, will accuse Nigel Farage’s Euroskeptic Reform UK party of wanting “to take Britain backwards” by tearing up the deal.  Farage and Tory opposition leader Kemi Badenoch have both pledged to junk Starmer’s changes to Boris Johnson’s Brexit settlement if they make it into government at the next election. Reform UK is currently leading Labour in the polls and on course for a majority in the House of Commons.  In extracts of the speech pre-briefed to journalists, Cabinet Office Minister Thomas-Symonds says Reform UK’s pledge means “cutting at least £9 billion from the economy, bringing with it a risk to jobs and a risk of food prices going up.” Reform UK in turn accused Labour of “cosying up” to the EU. Thomas-Symonds will claim that reversing the reset will risk investment in the food and drink sector, make exporting more difficult for farmers and fishers, as well as other small business owners, and see food once again rot in the back of lorries stuck in 16-hour queues.  Senior figures in the Labour government see fast delivery on EU trade as key to their pitch at the next general election. They want the British public to start seeing the benefits of the new agreements through lower supermarket prices before the run-up to the contest.  Key to this is the sanitary and phytosanitary deal, talks on which are set to start in the fall. The agreement has been broadly welcomed across the food and drink and agriculture sectors. But Euroskeptics are angry that it’ll tie the U.K. to Brussels.  Thomas-Symonds is expected to say he wants the SPS agreement to be operational by 2027. He’ll also recommit the government to Labour’s red lines of no return to the EU’s Customs Union or Single Market. On Tuesday the British government published new data which it says illustrates the scale of bureaucracy businesses face and the potential benefits of an SPS agreement: The Animal Health and Plant Agency issued 328,727 export health certificates in 2024. The certificates cost as much as £200 each.  A Reform UK spokesman shot back in a statement: “Cosying up to the EU and leaving us entangled in reams of retained EU law which Kemi Badenoch failed to scrap will not resuscitate Britain’s struggling economy.”

BREXITEERS GLOAT OVER TRUMP’S EU TRADE ‘DISASTER,’ BUT HAS BRITAIN REALLY WON?  While the U.K.’s low-tariff agreement with America is a Brexit bonus, victory over Europe may not be what Keir Starmer needs. By TIM ROSS Photo-Illustration by Malak Saleh for POLITICO LONDON — Dominic Cummings, the maverick former aide to ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson who masterminded the 2016 Brexit campaign, has other fish to fry these days. But on Monday he interrupted his stream of prophecies about immigration, censorship and the failures of the political elites to note what a terrible trade deal the European Union had struck with U.S. President Donald Trump. “Thanks to Brexit we’re outside this humiliating disaster for the EU and the many more to come,” Cummings wrote in a post on X which he began with two clown emojis. For a man known for colorful language and an insatiable appetite for savaging his former colleagues, the gloating seemed a little half-hearted. Perhaps he felt there was no point overdoing it, given how badly the deal had gone down inside the EU itself.  The trade agreement Brussels reached with Trump at his Turnberry golf course in Scotland on Sunday wasn’t even hailed as a triumphant victory by Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president who negotiated it. The best she could say was that it “creates certainty in uncertain times.”  Gallingly for Europeans, the raw numbers showed that the EU, with a 15 percent baseline tariff on its exports to the U.S., had achieved a worse result than post-Brexit Britain, which negotiated a lower tariff rate of 10 percent on goods sold into the American market. On top of the tariffs (which the EU will not apply to U.S. imports), Brussels committed European countries to spending hundreds of billions of euros on American energy and defense supplies.  French Prime Minister François Bayrou said the deal represented a “dark day” as he lamented the Commission’s capitulation. Commentators complained that the EU had not fought hard enough and should have retaliated against Trump’s tariff threats to demonstrate the sort of strength that he might respect.  But Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor, won out with his calls for a speedy deal, refusing to put his manufacturing-heavy economy at risk in a transatlantic trade war. “Please let’s find a solution quickly,” he said in Brussels a month ago. For Merz, that old phrase from Brexit negotiations — “No deal is better than a bad deal” — seemed not to apply this time. While the legal details of Trump’s agreements are yet to be worked out, for some in the EU the U.K.’s apparently superior result stung most of all. “We seem to have gotten worse conditions than the U.K.,” said Brando Benifei, the Italian MEP who chairs the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with the U.S. “That’s not a good starting point.”  The question EU officials don’t want to ask is whether Trump’s transatlantic trade shakedown, more than any other episode in the five years since Britain left the EU, may be the moment Brexit finally paid off. BREXIT BONUS In London, Keir Starmer’s Labour government was diplomatic in its tone but clear in public that the U.K.’s freedom to go its own way outside the EU’s trade orbit had been a big advantage when negotiating with Trump. But European diplomats privately counter that there’s unlikely to be any economist alive who would claim that a slightly better deal on tariffs with Trump could make up for the long-term destruction Brexit caused to the British economy. Even though the U.K.’s freedom to strike its own trade deal with America did put Keir Starmer in the position of being able to score an easy goal against the EU, his government is not bragging about it. | Pool Photo by Chris Ratcliffe via EPA According to the U.K. Treasury’s independent forecasters, the Office for Budget Responsibility, leaving the EU will reduce long-term productivity by 4 percent, while both exports and imports will be about 15 percent lower than if the U.K. had remained inside the bloc.  In Europe, however, the unflattering U.S. trade deal has provoked some to rethink their criticism of Britain’s efforts. Back in May, the EU scorned the outline deal the British prime minister had negotiated. “We’re not interested in this kind of agreement; what we want are meaningful discussions with the U.S.,” one EU diplomat said at the time, dismissing the British deal as “a piece of paper that has virtually no impact.” Others went further and ruled out an agreement of the type that London had accepted. “If the U.K.-U.S. deal is what the EU gets, the U.S. can expect countermeasures from us,” Swedish Trade Minister Benjamin Dousa said on his way into a meeting of trade ministers in Brussels two months ago.  In comments to POLITICO this week, Dousa accepted that the deal von der Leyen struck may have been as good as it was possible to get, though he was far from enthusiastic. “This agreement does not make anyone richer, but is perhaps the least worst option,” he said. HOW DID STARMER ONE-UP THE EU? The U.S. talks had gone so badly that even French President Emmanuel Macron conceded at a summit last month that he would accept a U.K.-style 10-percent tariff if that was the best Trump would offer. But while Macron would rather have waited to secure better terms, he didn’t, in public at least, expect to get a worse deal than the British.  As for Germany’s Merz, he argued that “more simply wasn’t achievable.” Yet a glance across the English Channel shows that isn’t necessarily true.  How did Starmer achieve better terms than the EU despite representing a far smaller (and theoretically less powerful) trading partner? For one thing, he decided from the start that he wanted to fast-track talks with Trump and succeeded in getting better headline terms with the U.S. in part because talks began quickly. That’s not all Europe’s fault: For months, Trump was reluctant even to pick up the phone to von der Leyen.  “It’s quite obvious that Trump can’t stand the EU,” said Anand Menon, professor of European politics at King’s College London. “[But] he has a soft spot for the U.K. and he obviously has a soft spot for Keir Starmer.”  KEIR CHARMER The British premier has won plaudits for the way he has kept Trump onside through a mix of charm, flattering invitations to meet royalty, and regular contact including via WhatsApp messages.  At the same time as sticking close to the Americans, Starmer has improved the U.K.’s post-Brexit relations with the EU, soothing tensions with France, Germany and Brussels and making progress on deals with the bloc on both trade and security policy.  “Let’s see how long that lasts,” said Menon, who is also director of the UK in a Changing Europe think tank. “We already hear people in the EU grumbling about the U.K. playing both sides.”  Britain is trying to work closely with the EU on defense cooperation, the Gaza conflict, Iran’s nuclear program, and fending off Russia. New tensions in the relationship caused by Trump’s trade war antics won’t help.  The trade agreement Brussels reached with Donald Trump at his Turnberry golf course in Scotland wasn’t even hailed as a triumphant victory by Ursula von der Leyen. | Oliver Matthys/EPA One potential post-Brexit flashpoint is — as it always was — the highly sensitive issue of the different rules that will apply on either side of the Northern Ireland border.  Under the terms of Trump’s deals, businesses in the Republic of Ireland (which is in the EU) will export to the U.S. under a 15 percent tariff, while those across the border in Northern Ireland (which is part of the United Kingdom) will have a lower tariff of 10 percent. “It will just bring the issue of Brexit back to the fore,” Menon said.  GOOD FOR FARAGE In the end, even though the U.K.’s freedom to strike its own trade deal with America did put Starmer in the position of being able to score an easy goal against the EU, his government is not bragging about it — and he is unlikely to be thanked.  British voters are more ready to associate Starmer’s Labour Party with a desire to undo Brexit (he previously backed calls for a second referendum) than as a champion of buccaneering global Britain. In order to win the election last year, Starmer pledged that he would not take the U.K. back into either the EU customs union or single market.  Anything that seems like a victory for Brexit is more likely to favor an already potent rival — the godfather of the U.K.’s withdrawal from the EU, Nigel Farage. His Reform UK party is now consistently leading opinion polls with an eight point lead over Labour, and threatens to cut short Starmer’s desired decade in power.  Farage’s counterparts on the populist right elsewhere in Europe have also found fuel for their anti-Brussels fire in the Trump deal. In a post on X on Monday, Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany, said: “The EU has been brutally taken for a ride!” In France, veteran far-right former presidential candidate Marine Le Pen savaged the U.S. agreement as “a political, economic, and moral fiasco,” adding: “The European Union, with its 27 member states, obtained worse conditions than the United Kingdom.” For all Starmer’s success, it won’t win him friends in Europe when it’s used as evidence that the EU mainstream is failing to deliver for ordinary voters. As so often in the long and tortured story of Brexit, even the winners lose in the end. Clea Caulcutt and Josh Berlinger contributed reporting from Paris.