Coquelles (France) (AFP)
General rehearsal before the Brexit on the site of the Channel Tunnel in Calais: the French customs and the company Eurotunnel proceeded on Tuesday with an exercise of controls and are said "confident" in their capacity to maintain the fluidity of the traffic.
Under a large white courtyard, in Calais on the French side, as in Folkestone on the British side, a vast toll station through which all heavy goods vehicles pass in transit, a handful of trucks held behind barriers have their customs declaration validated: a simple scanned bar code. by a Eurotunnel agent.
The formality will become systematic when Calais will become one of the crossing points of the external border of the EU, once the Brexit has been ratified.
"We are confident in our ability to ensure the fluidity of the terminal as we do today," said AFP Anne-Laure Descleves, spokesperson for Eurotunnel.
"Our challenge is to warn all carriers that it will be necessary to make customs declarations upstream," in order to obtain the famous barcode, sesame essential to circulate without a hitch.
In order not to lengthen the procedure before entering the tunnel, and thus avoid the nightmarish scenario of endless heavy truck lanes, the capacity of the site has been increased and the new formality is carried out at the same time as the controls security or immigration, mandatory.
"We have integrated our system in an organization where there are already stops and waiting times (...) to integrate seamlessly," said Eric Meunier, interregional director of customs Hauts-de-France, welcoming this "digital frontier".
Once the bar code has been scanned, the contents of the shipment appear in the customs computer system, which, on the French side, may decide whether or not to carry out additional checks, and, if necessary, inspect the goods once the truck has left the tunnel in Calais. .
Nine loading and unloading docks have been created especially on the terminal in France, made available to customs officers and veterinarians of the Sivep (Sanitary and Phytosanitary Inspection Service, under the Ministry of Agriculture).
British side, however, no additional controls envisaged immediately after the crossing. "The British authorities considered that trucks arriving on their island would not leave without seeing it pass, and they could decide additional controls later," said Anne-Laure Descleves.
With all these measures, the Channel Tunnel "will not be a traffic bottleneck," she says.
- "Lots of waiting" -
The drivers, already scalded by the queues observed at the time of the customs strike in the spring, or by checks to identify potential migrants, in 2015, before the streamlining of the procedure, seem less convinced. They are waiting to see how the system will work in real conditions, with the 5,000 trucks that pass through the site every day, rather than the twenty or so volunteers who complied with the exercise on Tuesday.
Steven Meurin, from the transport company RDV, does not hide his apprehension: the connection with England is "vital" for his company, it represents "at least 50% of its turnover".
"It's going to be a lot of waiting, it's going to take days to pass, there will be lines of trucks, it's going to be a big box," he says, as he prepares to cross the English Channel. as he does twice a week.
Eurotunnel, for its part, is resolutely optimistic. "The test ensures the robustness of the computer system, and it works well.If it works for 10, it will work for 5000 trucks a day," wants to believe Anne-Laure Descleves.
It recognizes that it will probably be necessary to go through a "break-in period", with "a few moments not necessarily very easy at the time of the systematic introduction of new customs controls.
While the major transport companies are used to administrative procedures and do not cause any concern, the question remains for "intra-European" carriers, not necessarily informed of the necessary customs procedures before setting off.
© 2019 AFP