Education

UK rejoins Erasmus+ programme: £570m deal with EU

Five years after its exit, London returns to the European student exchange programme, with a significant investment and over 100,000 students involved.

17 December 2025

Expo 2015, Erasmus e Volunteers Day (Luca Matarazzo, MILANO - 2015-10-11) p.s. la foto e' utilizzabile nel rispetto del contesto in cui e' stata scattata, e senza intento diffamatorio del decoro delle persone rappresentate

3' min read

Translated by AI

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Key points

United Kingdom exited Erasmus+ due to cost issues

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Official agreement between Keir Starmer's British government and the EU for the UK's re-joining Erasmus, the European student exchange programme abandoned by the island after Brexit five years ago.

On Wednesday 17 December, Britain and the European Union agreed to allow UK students to re-join the popular student exchange programme Erasmus+, a small but symbolic sign of improved relations after Brexit.

The UK's contribution for the 2027/28 academic year will be £570 million ($650 million), the UK government said.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has sought closer ties with the EU since his election last year and in May welcomed a 'new era' in relations when the two sides agreed to the most significant restoration of trade and defence ties since the country's exit from the EU in 2020.

More than 100,000 people in the UK could benefit from the programme in the first year, the government said.

The UK's return to the Erasmus+ programme, which allows hundreds of thousands of EU students each year to study in another EU country for up to one year, has long been a key EU demand to strengthen ties between the two sides.

The two sides also agreed to start negotiations on the integration of the electricity market and set a deadline to finalise a trade agreement on food and beverages and the linking of carbon markets next year, the note said.

The positive outcome of the Erasmus negotiation partly compensates for the recent failure of the Safe programme for financing European rearmament, from which the Starmer government finally decided to stay out - despite the strong partnership on the defence front, substantially untouched by Brexit - because of the billion-dollar membership costs set by Brussels.

United Kingdom exited Erasmus+ because of cost

The agreement, already anticipated by the media, opens the door to the Kingdom's entry into the Erasmus Plus scheme, which involves EU countries and external partner countries. An exchange programme that last year enabled around 1.5 million young people to take part in study courses at foreign universities around the Old Continent.

"Joining Erasmus+ (which will start in January 2027, writes Ansa) is an important victory for our young people and removes the obstacles to broadening their horizons, so that everyone, whatever their background, has the opportunity to study and train abroad,' said on the sidelines of the announcement Nick Thomas-Symonds, the minister for relations with the EU appointed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer to weave the fabric of that 'reset' of relations with Brussels evoked since Labour's return to power in 2024.

Today's news was greeted with enthusiasm by the leadership of the British University Students' Union and 'pro-European' politicians such asLiberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, according to whom, however, the Labour executive should renegotiate the entire framework of the EU divorce agreements inherited from past Brexiteer Conservative governments: starting with re-entry into the customs union.

The exit from Erasmus was imposed five years ago by Boris Johnson's Tory party, in the light of the excessive and unbalanced costs complained of to the Kingdom: taking into account that in the last year of British participation in the programme, the country had sent less than 10,000 young university students to study around Europe, while welcoming more than 55,000 from the Continent to its universities.

In its place, an autonomous international exchange scheme (named the Turing Programme in honour of a famous British mathematician) was created: it never really took off and its fate now seems sealed.