UK pursues 'ruthlessly pragmatic' closer EU ties amid global volatility, minister says
Britain is seeking closer cooperation with the European Union in a handful of targeted areas, taking an "ambitious" and "ruthlessly pragmatic" approach shaped by a volatile global landscape, the UK’s EU minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said in Brussels. Speaking at the UK ambassador’s residence in the Belgian capital, Thomas-Symonds argued that public support for closer ties has grown amid geopolitical turmoil.
"I do find a support for closer UK–EU relations… I think there is a particular imperative at the moment… we find ourselves in a dangerous situation in the world," he said. The government points to security and defence as areas where cooperation has already deepened, including a common approach on Ukraine and plans for joint procurement of armaments as European leaders pledge to shoulder more of their own defence.
Nearly a decade after the Brexit vote, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has promised to pare back post-Brexit red tape and costs for businesses trading with the EU, the UK’s largest export market.
By this summer, and ahead of a second post-Brexit EU–UK summit (with the date yet to be announced), the UK says it will have concluded three agreements with Brussels: a food and agricultural safety accord to ease burdens on exporters sending goods such as sausages to Northern Ireland and the EU; a deal on carbon emissions trading; and a youth "experience" programme allowing EU and UK youngsters to work or study in each other’s countries for a limited period.
On Wednesday, the two sides announced that the UK was rejoining the EU’s Erasmus+ scheme, aimed at helping more young people from the UK study across the bloc. Ministers insist the strategy respects the Brexit vote and the government’s red lines: there will be no return to EU membership, nor to the single market or customs union.
Critics on the right argue the approach amounts to rule-taking.
Leaders of Reform UK and the Conservative Party say "aligning" with the EU would leave Britain following Brussels’ rules rather than shaping them—at odds, they contend, with the Leave campaign’s promise to "take back control." Nigel Farage has called planned legislation "a backdoor attempt to drag Britain back under EU control," while Conservative figures such as Kemi Badenoch have accused ministers of lacking political courage.
The government rejects those claims. Starmer is planning legislation, expected later this year, to give ministers a fast-track route for introducing draft laws that align with future European standards, designed to ensure a single market in the trade of certain goods and services.
From the other side, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party say the government is not going far enough to secure closer EU ties that they argue would benefit the economy.
Against a backdrop of war in Ukraine, rising petrol prices and wider economic strain from the knock-on effects of the Iran war—and with relations with the United States characterised in Westminster as worsening—the push for selective cooperation with Europe has taken on new urgency in government messaging.
The second EU–UK summit is expected this summer, and ministers say they will pursue agreement-by-agreement alignment in areas they judge to be in the national interest, even as the domestic political debate intensifies.