The EU wants the UK to lower demands to charge thousands of pounds in visa fees for under-30s in return for help tackling the Channel crisis, The i Paper has learnt.

As negotiations on Sir Keir Starmer’s Brexit reset go to the “razor’s edge” ahead of Monday’s UK-EU summit, Brussels is pushing for fresh concessions from London on its key demand for a youth mobility scheme to allow under-30s to move, work and study between Britain and Europe.

The EU has accepted UK demands for youth mobility to be time-limited and capped, but sources said the British offer was still “unattractive” and “stringent”, and wants London to reduce expected demands for more than £1,000 of fees and requirement for £2,500 of savings to access the scheme.

If the UK makes concessions, an EU source suggested Brussels could give way on Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s demand for more migrant and criminal data-sharing, which the Home Office believes is key to tackling the Channel crisis.

The EU source said: “I wouldn’t be surprised if on migration data-sharing we can see progress – but it has to be exchanged for something.”

Brussels has also floated a new proposal for any youth mobility scheme to be subject to a review mechanism in a few years time, to see if it could be expanded.

A Whitehall source suggested the UK could agree to this second demand and it could provide a “landing” zone for talks on youth mobility, which have been strained due to Cooper’s overall goal of reducing net migration and political pressure from Reform.

‘Impossible’ for young people to come to UK

A European diplomatic source said: “You could have a quota that is set for the first two years and then you look how it’s going.

“The UK has youth mobility quotas with Australia that are never reached.

“I’m not sure how many Europeans will rush here despite Nigel Farage thinking millions want to come.

“This is something that doesn’t need to be set in stone for 100 years.”

EU sources also criticised the Government’s general approach to migration, saying it’s “practically impossible for a young person now to come to the UK”, adding that British demands for caps and time limits are “stringent” and “extremely limiting”.

The EU source said: “You have to have a system that is workable, that is attractive to both sides, that delivers a message of reciprocal trust.”

Despite the EU’s criticism, the UK Government is trying to win the domestic argument on youth mobility, circulating research around Labour MPs showing public support for a scheme.

Monday’s summit is not expected to produce an agreed youth mobility deal, but a political declaration is likely to commit both sides to negotiating one in future.

Brexit win on food

Britain is meanwhile expected to bank a Brexit win in the talks on a deal on cross-border agri-food trade – known as a veterinary or SPS agreement.

Sources told The i Paper the UK will get a carve-out that ensures animal welfare protections like the live animals export ban can be maintained despite alignment with EU rules on agri-food, which will ease the fears of campaigners that the post-Brexit law may have to be reversed.

The UK and EU are expected to agree a security and defence deal on Monday, that paves the way for British defence companies to access European rearmament loans for joint projects with member states.

But the biggest sticking point remaining in talks, which are set to go to the wire with EU ambassadors meeting on Sunday, is an argument over whether fishing rights and agri-food deals should be linked and time limited.

The UK wants a permanent agri-food deal to provide “certainty” for businesses, but wants to only grant the EU an extension of fishing rights for four years, arguing that an approach of regular negotiations was agreed between the two sides in the Boris Johnson’s Trade and Co-operation Agreement.

However, the EU is arguing that the agri-food deal should be subject to the same time limit if the UK does not grant permanent fishing rights.

An EU source said the UK is “using the same argument as the EU is using for fish”, as the diplomatic source warned that a four-year deal was “asking for trouble” as it would expire around the time of the next British general election campaign.

“The four years will end in the middle of the next British election campaign, I think that is not a good idea,” the source said.

“From the British side it’s not very clever, Labour doesn’t want to have this in the middle of an election campaign.”

Starmer was on Friday holding crunch talks with key EU figures including Commission president Ursula von der Leyen at Friday’s European Political Community summit in Albania that could plot a way through some of the remaining obstacles in reset talks.