Britain turned down the offer to remain a member of the cultural exchange program after Brexit.
The U.K. decided to leave the EU’s Erasmus+ student exchange scheme because Brits’ poor foreign language skills made membership too expensive to justify, a senior British official has revealed.
Lower take-up of the scheme by British students compared to other nationalities — put down to a weak aptitude for language learning — meant London expected to pay in nearly €300 million more a year than it received back, Nick Leake, a veteran senior diplomat at the U.K. Mission said this week.
It comes as youth organizations on both sides of the channel launch a renewed push for the U.K. to rejoin the scheme — and as an EU advisory body urges the Commission to get negotiations going.
So if I am reading this correctly, the problem is that UK students are not interested in going abroad (weak foreign language skills) and many Continental European students want to come to the UK (as almost everyone is learning English).
This means the UK has to pay more money than it receives.
But with this money, they would be ‘buying’ the chance to hold the interest of highly educated young people, who might love the British way of life and come back to work in the UK…
Sounds like just another step into economical and cultural irrelevancy.
Saving some money short term, losing a whole bunch long term.