UK and EU look to 2025 as year of reset but with little room for trade-offs
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Sir Keir Starmer is invited to an EU summit in February - the first of its type since the Brexit negotiations.

[T]hreats to security and to trade revenues have helped remind the EU and the UK of the common values they share in unpredictable times.

The EU felt weakened by Brexit in 2016. It meant losing a big economy and its only significant military power apart from France.

As for post-Brexit UK, now free from the rules of EU membership, it’s also now a far smaller power on the world stage.

And, closer to home, the Labour government has realised Europe is key to delivering on a number of priority pledges to the UK public.
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An EU-UK summit is planned for spring, and a number of political figures and high-level diplomats from EU member states and the UK spoke to me on condition of anonymity ahead of bilateral negotiations getting started.

I kept hearing of the “enormous amount of goodwill” in the EU towards the new Labour government with its oft-repeated “reset” enthusiasm.

At the same time though, there is a clear note of Brussels scepticism the Labour government would do well to take heed of, if it wants to see tangible results.

“The headspace is there. The appetite is there in Europe for closer UK relations,” one EU figure told me.

“What’s less clear is what London is really interested in - and what trade-offs it’s willing to make to get there. That’s key and that appears not to have been bottomed out in London yet.”
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Whatever the developments in EU-UK relations in 2025 and beyond, they are likely to happen slowly because of political concerns and because negotiations have a habit of getting bogged down in detail.

In direct contrast, a recent poll by YouGov and Datapraxis for the European Council of Foreign Relations suggests voters in the EU and UK are far more gung-ho than leaders in Brussels and London about jumping over previous political taboos to strengthen ties.

The poll found that around half of those asked in the UK believe greater engagement with the EU is the best way to boost the UK economy (50%), strengthen its security (53%) and effectively manage migration (58%).

When asked who the UK government should prioritise relations with, 50% choose Europe and only 17% the US.

A huge 68% of respondents in Britain see a benefit in reintroducing cross-Channel freedom of movement in exchange for access to the European single market.