Where talks stand on YES visas

EU ambassadors meeting in Brussels were told on Wednesday that the UK is still insisting on international tuition fees, quotas and an NHS surcharge for EU students. The reciprocal youth experience scheme would let under-30s from both sides work, travel or study in each other's countries, but it is deadlocked.

The UK is pushing for a cap of about 50,000 EU citizens a year for work, travel or study under the mooted YES visas, and insists holders pay the £1,035 NHS surcharge, with a 25% discount understood to have been suggested. On the EU side, some member states want the cap much higher, at up to 500,000, while others want no cap at all.

Tuition fees are the thorniest issue

Fees are proving the hardest point of all. UK universities have been pressuring the Labour government to keep charging EU citizens full international fees, which reach £69,190 a year at Oxford. Universities outside the 24-strong Russell Group have told the government they cannot afford to drop fees for EU citizens.

One diplomat reported an "emerging consensus" around a European Commission proposal to take tuition fees out of the package, with a joint statement on 20 November committing both sides to negotiating a solution by May 2027.

If a middle way is found, it was thought to lie between home fees of £9,790 and average international fees. But the bloc is itself split on whether fees should leave the table, and on how a cap would work, amid UK fears that "red wall" voters would see it as opening gates to workers from poorer countries such as Bulgaria.

What else is nearly agreed

Away from visas, much of the summit package is close to done:

• A food and drink trade deal and the emissions trading system are almost complete
• Near-agreement exists on the National Farmers' Union demand that crops grown with fungicides not yet EU-approved could be sold in the bloc under a transition arrangement in the sanitary and phyto-sanitary agreement
• Talks on reintegrating the UK into the EU's energy market will continue after 20 November, with state aid and oversight frameworks, including a role for the European court of justice, still barriers

Keep the trio together or decouple

Whether the youth mobility scheme stays tied to the other files is itself unsettled. One diplomat said many member states favoured keeping the trio of issues together, while others accepted decoupling them, with no agreement on the approach. A proposal to cap figures per country has been suggested, but how it would work in practice has not been detailed.

France is still arguing for an "all or nothing" approach with all three topics on the table, asking why the UK would agree tuition fees in six months if it cannot now, 17 months after the last EU-UK summit. Others counter that with pressure to move on to deeper economic, security and defence ties, they cannot risk failure on 20 November.