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What Britain and the EU May Discuss at Monday Summit

A fan of Britain poses outside the venue for the grand final of the 69th Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in Basel, Switzerland, 17 May 2025. (EPA)
A fan of Britain poses outside the venue for the grand final of the 69th Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in Basel, Switzerland, 17 May 2025. (EPA)
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What Britain and the EU May Discuss at Monday Summit

A fan of Britain poses outside the venue for the grand final of the 69th Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in Basel, Switzerland, 17 May 2025. (EPA)
A fan of Britain poses outside the venue for the grand final of the 69th Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in Basel, Switzerland, 17 May 2025. (EPA)

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will welcome European Union leaders to London on Monday to help reset relations with the bloc, with both sides aiming to secure progress in some specific areas while other issues will remain off-limits.

Below is a list of issues that could be discussed.

DEFENSE AND SECURITY PACT

Britain's Labour government wants to pursue a defense and security pact that previous Conservative governments opted not to seek when Brexit was first negotiated.

Both sides agree it is imperative for Europe to work more closely together on defense, given Russia's invasion of Ukraine and calls by US President Donald Trump for NATO's European members to shoulder more of the burden of the alliance.

Britain could try to negotiate access for UK companies to joint defense projects under Security Action For Europe - an EU loan scheme worth 150 billion euros ($168 billion) - and how much it will have to pay for that access. This could also facilitate greater foreign policy co-ordination.

But such an agreement may be contingent on other areas such as fish.

SANITARY AND PHYTOSANITARY

Labor has positioned a veterinary agreement with the EU that is aimed at preventing unnecessary border checks as central to its planned EU reset.

Any deal would maintain high food standards, which Britain also insisted were not lowered in its discussions with the US to remove tariffs.

The EU is likely to ask Britain for dynamic alignment with its sanitary and phytosanitary rules and a role for the European Court of Justice, which Starmer could agree to, according to think tank UK in a Changing Europe.

The more likely scenario at this summit is that both sides agree on a future framework for negotiations, rather than reach a final agreement.

MOBILITY

A youth mobility scheme to make it easier for under-30s to travel and work between Britain and the EU is a priority for the bloc.

Starmer's government has said this will not be a return to freedom of movement, but to a controlled amount of people, with a likely limit on how many can use it and how long they can stay. Campaign group Best for Britain said two-thirds of Britons support a scheme with a two-year limit.

British participation in the Erasmus+ student exchange program could also be discussed in future.

And Britain is hoping to secure access to faster e-gates at EU airports for British travelers.

FISHERIES

Provisions covering fishing and energy are due to expire in 2026, and need to be extended or renegotiated over the next year.

The post-Brexit trade agreement transferred existing quotas to the bloc for a transition period, after which they would be negotiated on an annual or multi-annual basis.

EU diplomats have said that a fisheries deal should be the same length as any agreement on sanitary and phytosanitary measures, to ensure equal leverage during any renegotiations, while France is pushing for any defense deal to be contingent on a fisheries agreement.

Fishing has long been a source of tension. The EU has taken Britain to court over its ban of fishing for sand eels in UK waters.

ELECTRICITY

Britain left the EU's internal energy market after Brexit, but the UK's energy industry is pushing for more efficient and closer electricity trading arrangements with the bloc.

Britain imported around 14% of its electricity in 2024, a record high, through power links with Belgium, Denmark, France and Norway.

CARBON MARKETS

Many EU and British businesses have called for the EU and UK carbon markets to be linked. They already collaborate on charging power plants and other industrial entities for their carbon emissions to reach climate targets.

Industry analysts have said linking the two carbon markets would likely drive up UK prices, which are lower than the EU, to EU levels.

But energy firms say it will save costs for consumers, improve market liquidity, and help Britain to avoid penalties under Europe's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which from 2026 will impose fees on EU imports of steel, cement, aluminium, fertilizers, electricity and hydrogen.

OTHER AREAS

The mutual recognition of certain professional qualifications, changes to ease travel for touring artists, and data-sharing are all areas where Britain and the EU may seek to pursue future agreement.

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As the UN Turns 80, Its Crucial Humanitarian Aid Work Faces a Clouded Future

Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
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As the UN Turns 80, Its Crucial Humanitarian Aid Work Faces a Clouded Future

Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

At a refugee camp in northern Kenya, Aujene Cimanimpaye waits as a hot lunch of lentils and sorghum is ladled out for her and her nine children — all born while she has received United Nations assistance since fleeing her violence-wracked home in Congo in 2007.

“We cannot go back home because people are still being killed,” the 41-year-old said at the Kakuma camp, where the UN World Food Program and UN refugee agency help support more than 300,000 refugees, The Associated Press said.

Her family moved from Nakivale Refugee Settlement in neighboring Uganda three years ago to Kenya, now home to more than a million refugees from dozens of conflict-hit east African countries.

A few kilometers (miles) away at the Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement, fellow Congolese refugee Bahati Musaba, a mother of five, said that since 2016, “UN agencies have supported my children’s education — we get food and water and even medicine,” as well as cash support from WFP to buy food and other basics.

This year, those cash transfers — and many other UN aid activities — have stopped, threatening to upend or jeopardize millions of lives.

As the UN marks its 80th anniversary this month, its humanitarian agencies are facing one of the greatest crises in their history: The biggest funder — the United States — under the Trump administration and other Western donors have slashed international aid spending. Some want to use the money to build up national defense.

Some UN agencies are increasingly pointing fingers at one another as they battle over a shrinking pool of funding, said a diplomat from a top donor country who spoke on condition of anonymity to comment freely about the funding crisis faced by some UN agencies.

Such pressures, humanitarian groups say, diminish the pivotal role of the UN and its partners in efforts to save millions of lives — by providing tents, food and water to people fleeing unrest in places like Myanmar, Sudan, Syria and Venezuela, or helping stamp out smallpox decades ago.

“It’s the most abrupt upheaval of humanitarian work in the UN in my 40 years as a humanitarian worker, by far,” said Jan Egeland, a former UN humanitarian aid chief who now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council. “And it will make the gap between exploding needs and contributions to aid work even bigger.”

‘Brutal’ cuts to humanitarian aid programs UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has asked the heads of UN agencies to find ways to cut 20% of their staffs, and his office in New York has floated sweeping ideas about reform that could vastly reshape the way the United Nations doles out aid.

Humanitarian workers often face dangers and go where many others don’t — to slums to collect data on emerging viruses or drought-stricken areas to deliver water.

The UN says 2024 was the deadliest year for humanitarian personnel on record, mainly due to the war in Gaza. In February, it suspended aid operations in the stronghold of Yemen’s Houthi group, who have detained dozens of UN and other aid workers.

Proponents say UN aid operations have helped millions around the world affected by poverty, illness, conflict, hunger and other troubles.

Critics insist many operations have become bloated, replete with bureaucratic perks and a lack of accountability, and are too distant from in-the-field needs. They say postcolonial Western donations have fostered dependency and corruption, which stifles the ability of countries to develop on their own, while often UN-backed aid programs that should be time-specific instead linger for many years with no end in sight.

In the case of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning WFP and the UN’s refugee and migration agencies, the US has represented at least 40% of their total budgets, and Trump administration cuts to roughly $60 billion in US foreign assistance have hit hard. Each UN agency has been cutting thousands of jobs and revising aid spending.

“It's too brutal what has happened,” said Egeland, alluding to cuts that have jolted the global aid community. “However, it has forced us to make priorities ... what I hope is that we will be able to shift more of our resources to the front lines of humanity and have less people sitting in offices talking about the problem.”

With the UN Security Council's divisions over wars in Ukraine and the Middle East hindering its ability to prevent or end conflict in recent years, humanitarian efforts to vaccinate children against polio or shelter and feed refugees have been a bright spot of UN activity. That's dimming now.

Not just funding cuts cloud the future of UN humanitarian work

Aside from the cuts and dangers faced by humanitarian workers, political conflict has at times overshadowed or impeded their work.

UNRWA, the aid agency for Palestinian refugees, has delivered an array of services to millions — food, education, jobs and much more — in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as well as in the West Bank and Gaza since its founding in 1948.

Israel claims the agency's schools fan antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment, which the agency denies. Israel says Hamas siphons off UN aid in Gaza to profit from it, while UN officials insist most aid gets delivered directly to the needy.

“UNRWA is like one of the foundations of your home. If you remove it, everything falls apart,” said Issa Haj Hassan, 38, after a checkup at a small clinic at the Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut.

UNRWA covers his diabetes and blood pressure medication, as well as his wife’s heart medicine. The United States, Israel's top ally, has stopped contributing to UNRWA; it once provided a third of its funding. Earlier this year, Israel banned the aid group, which has strived to continue its work nonetheless.

Ibtisam Salem, a single mother of five in her 50s who shares a small one-room apartment in Beirut with relatives who sleep on the floor, said: “If it wasn’t for UNRWA we would die of starvation. ... They helped build my home, and they give me health care. My children went to their schools.”

Especially when it comes to food and hunger, needs worldwide are growing even as funding to address them shrinks.

“This year, we have estimated around 343 million acutely food insecure people,” said Carl Skau, WFP deputy executive director. “It’s a threefold increase if we compare four years ago. And this year, our funding is dropping 40%. So obviously that’s an equation that doesn’t come together easily.”

Billing itself as the world's largest humanitarian organization, WFP has announced plans to cut about a quarter of its 22,000 staff.

The aid landscape is shifting

One question is how the United Nations remains relevant as an aid provider when global cooperation is on the outs, and national self-interest and self-defense are on the upswing.

The United Nations is not alone: Many of its aid partners are feeling the pinch. Groups like GAVI, which tries to ensure fair distribution of vaccines around the world, and the Global Fund, which spends billions each year to help battle HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, have been hit by Trump administration cuts to the US Agency for International Development.

Some private-sector, government-backed groups also are cropping up, including the divisive Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been providing some food to Palestinians. But violence has erupted as crowds try to reach the distribution sites.

The future of UN aid, experts say, will rest where it belongs — with the world body's 193 member countries.

“We need to take that debate back into our countries, into our capitals, because it is there that you either empower the UN to act and succeed — or you paralyze it,” said Achim Steiner, administrator of the UN Development Program.