How close is the UK getting to the European Union?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 24 July 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
'Britain is back on the world stage' said Prime Minister Keir Starmer in May following the first UK-EU summit since the UK left the EU in January 2020. Outline agreements were reached to remove red tape for British farm exports and energy trading with the EU as well as plans for a security and defence partnership. Then a few weeks later the Prime Minister held summits in London with first the French President, Emmanuel Macron and then the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz. David Aaronovitch asks whether this is the beginning of a new closer relationship with the European Union and if so, what compromises might need to be made.
Guests: Peter Foster, World Trade Editor of the Financial Times Jill Rutter, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government Anand Menon, Director of the UK in a Changing Europe Mujtaba Rahman, Managing Director for Europe at Eurasia Group Consultancy
Presenter: David Aaronovitch Producers: Caroline Bayley, Ben Carter and Kirsteen Knight Production Co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele Studio engineers: Callum Mclean and James Beard Editors: Richard Vadon and Lisa Baxter
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:08.9 | It's turned into a European summer for Britain and Kyr Starma. The words have been as warm as the weather. |
| 0:16.2 | The president of the European Commission, Ersina Bondoline, was here eight weeks ago for our first |
| 0:21.1 | joint summit since 2020. She was followed by Emmanuel Macron France, and he was succeeded by |
| 0:27.5 | German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz. It was almost like the old days, lots of flags and handshaking, |
| 0:33.6 | and even some agreements made or hinted at. So, is this the beginning of a new closer relationship with the European Union? |
| 0:42.2 | Or is everyone just being nice? |
| 0:44.5 | Step into the briefing room and together we'll find out. |
| 0:50.1 | First, let's find out what exactly has been happening recently between the UK and the European Union. |
| 0:56.0 | I'm joined by Peter Foster, world trade editor at the Financial Times. |
| 1:00.4 | Peter Foster, can you remind us what Labour said in its manifesto last year about the UK and the EU and what they do? |
| 1:08.4 | So the big thing it said is that they're going to, quote, make Brexit work. |
| 1:13.5 | What they promised was a reset of relations with Europe, which you'll remember had been |
| 1:18.1 | very fractures in the era of Boris Johnson and Lord David Frost, and it improved a little bit |
| 1:24.0 | under Rishi Sunak. |
| 1:26.0 | That was the general pitch, make Brexit work, but the |
| 1:30.2 | specifics were more complicated. They also set two red lines, which was no membership of the EU |
| 1:36.2 | customs union and no membership of the EU single market. And that limited what they could |
| 1:40.9 | achieve in this goal of a reset. And that came down to three things. |
| 1:45.4 | One was a veterinary agreement, which would do a deal with the EU to follow EU rules |
| 1:49.4 | to reduce and remove all those checks on food and plant products that were moving back |
| 1:54.7 | and forth across the border. |
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