Brexit meant an end to the UK’s involvement in several of the EU’s flagship programmes, including the world-leading Galileo network and the Erasmus+ student exchange scheme, while its participation in the Horizon Europe research programme is still in doubt.

The UK’s initial deal with the EU included membership of schemes like Horizon and the Earth-observing Copernicus network, but an impasse over implementing the terms of the Northern Ireland Protocol means there is now a major delay.

During those seemingly never-ending Brexit negotiations that followed the 2016 Brexit vote and which lasted almost all the way up to the 2020 deadline, membership of many of those programmes was on the table, should the UK have agreed to certain criteria.

Full participation in Galileo, however, was never likely, due to opposition from some EU members - most notably France - and in the end the British negotiators decided not to sign up to a ‘Galileo-lite’ option, without...