Gauthier Delomez with AFP 4:46 p.m., September 15, 2022

In the program "France moves", the president of Getlink, operator of the Channel tunnel, announced that the Eurostar railway company would develop new links between London and France within five years.

These should serve Bordeaux and the Côte d'Azur.

The British are the first tourists in terms of volume to come to France each year.

To strengthen the attractiveness of France, Jacques Gounon, the president of Getlink, which operates the Channel Tunnel, explained in the program

La France moves

that the company Eurostar, a subsidiary of the SNCF, wants to develop new destinations .

"We work for a London-Bordeaux", he underlines first, before mentioning a destination on the edge of the Mediterranean.

A five-year deadline, hopes the president of Getlink

"There is a futures market, the more we talk about decarbonization and stopping private jets, which is London-Côte d'Azur because it remains a center of attraction for the British", says the president of Getlink on Europe 1. These new destinations will be added to those that already exist in Europe, such as the London-Brussels and London-Amsterdam routes.

>> Find all the programs of La France mouvement from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. on Europe 1 as well as in replay and podcast here

The timing, however, remains an unknown.

"In the field of railways and Franco-British diplomatic relations, the slightest progress is a bit of technique, a lot of convictions, and months, months...", evokes Jacques Gounon, hoping "a deadline of five years" for the opening of these lines.

Stopping connections to Disneyland Paris for the summer of 2023

At the end of August, the Eurostar company had however announced that it would stop its London-Disneyland Paris connections for the summer of 2023 due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit.

The company said it had "taken the decision to no longer provide the direct link between London and Marne-la-Vallée in the summer of 2023", but no decision has been made for the following year.

“We will review our options for 2024 sometime next year,” the rail company said.

Eurostar “continues to recover financially from the pandemic”, but is also preparing for a new computer system which must govern entry and exit from the Schengen area from next year, the company explained in a statement.