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The United Kingdom is reportedly considering spending up to £450 million a year so that students from the European Union can pay the same university tuition fees as British students, but only if Brussels allows the UK to join its proposed "Made in Europe" industrial scheme.
The offer, reported by The Guardian on November 1, is one of the last unresolved issues before a UK-EU summit in Brussels on November 20. Nothing has been agreed yet, and no start date has been set.
Since Brexit, students from EU countries studying at British universities have paid international fees, which can rise above £60,000 a year for some courses, rather than the home fee of just over £9,000. In England, home tuition fees are capped at £9,790 in 2026/27, rising to £10,050 in 2027/28.
Under the plan, ministers have drawn up proposals to let students arriving from the EU pay the home rate, with the government compensating universities for the income they would lose, rather than leaving institutions to absorb the difference. Treasury officials have drawn up cost estimates across different combinations of fee discounts and student demand.
Two sources who have seen the costings told The Guardian that under the most expensive scenario — fees cut to the domestic level combined with very high demand — the government could end up paying £450 million a year. Another source said the true cost was likely to be lower, and a government official described the figure as "speculative". Mark Corver, director of the analysts Campus Numerics, had previously estimated the change would cost the sector £140 million in the first year and £400 million over a typical three-year course.
"We are willing to give the Europeans what they want on fees, but we will have to get something significant in return," one person with knowledge of the talks told The Guardian. "The biggest prize we are pushing for right now is access to Made in Europe."
Made in Europe is a proposed EU industrial programme, linked to the Industrial Accelerator Act presented in March 2026, that would favour goods made in the bloc and impose trade restrictions on countries outside it. British negotiators are seeking guarantees that UK manufacturers will not be excluded from industrial support measures intended to favour European production.
Agreement has largely been reached in several other areas ahead of the summit, including emissions trading, agricultural products and a youth mobility scheme, with reports suggesting up to 80,000 young Europeans a year could come to Britain to work, live and study. The two sides are also close to a deal on UK access to European databases, including Eurodac, which holds the fingerprints of asylum seekers, and the Schengen Information System II, which tracks fugitives, missing persons and stolen goods.
Students from outside the EU, including those from Nigeria and the rest of Africa, would not be affected by the fees proposal and would continue to pay international fees. Separately, the UK is rejoining the Erasmus+ exchange programme in 2027.