Soft exit from Brexit?

More and more Britons understand today that the "Brexit" was a rather bad idea... Foto: Mark from Brighton / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY 2.0

(KL) – After all, the “Brexit” may have been all but a good idea. Years after Great Britain went into a self-chosen isolation, some of the consequences are being perceived as annoying, to say the least. Especially the lack of mobility for young people starts to pose a problem, because the number of foreign students in Great Britain drops as well as the number of British students which study abroad. On the long run, the lack of academic exchanges will lead to an impoverishment of academic achievements.

Today, young Britons wishing to study abroad, must undergo a lengthy and often complicated process of requesting residence and work permits and visa exceeding 90 days. This hinders many students to seriously envision studies in European countries and the same applies the other way round – studying in Great Britain becomes a complicated administrative task for young Europeans who are used to freely travel and study wherever they want in Europe.

The plan proposed by the European Commission foresees a special 4-years-visa for young people between 18 and 30 years, re-establishing more mobility for young Britons as well as for young Europeans who could enter Great Britain under the same scheme. One of the goals of the Commission is also to avoid expensive tuition fees for international students at British universities – and this sounds very much like a “soft exit from Brexit”, at least for young people.

However, as stated by The Times, the British government is not (yet?) too excited about the idea, considering that such a scheme would be more favorable for young Europeans who could claim access to British health schemes and government paid apprenticeship programs. Talks will continue, but it becomes clearer and clearer that the “Brexit” isolation of Great Britain is not really helpful on so many levels.

If the European Union is currently in a very bad shape, political and economical isolation is even worse. It is about time to admit that “Brexit” was a bad idea, that it didn’t fulfill any of the then made promises and to start searching for ways to reconnect Great Britain and the EU. But for the time being, this is not on the agenda of the Tories and not on the Labor agenda either. In any case, facilitating mobility for young Britons and Europeans would be a good first step.