Before crossing to France, a number of travelers again had to put up with long waiting times in front of the British port of Dover on Saturday. Port boss Doug Bannister warned of delays of up to six hours.
A high volume of travel and the additional border controls required due to Brexit have led to long traffic jams in Great Britain on the way across the English Channel to France. Trade unions, port authorities and the French authorities agreed on Saturday that the main reason for this was Britain's exit from the EU. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, on the other hand, blamed France.
Cars and trucks waited in lines stretching for miles at the Port of Dover. On Saturday, the ferry company P
The French border authorities are understaffed, said Truss, who is running to succeed Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Paris must do something "to resolve the terrible situation that travelers, including families, are facing."
The prefect of the Hauts-de-France region, Georges-François Leclerc, said France had "done its job" by increasing its border staff in Dover from 120 to 200 people. But because of an accident on Friday, French border officials arrived late at their post in Dover. This caused delays.
French Transport Minister Clément Beaune said French authorities were "mobilized" to ease traffic. However, France is "not responsible for Brexit".
With the UK leaving the European Union last year, border controls and additional formalities for freight transport were reintroduced. At the entrance to the port of Dover, there had therefore been repeated traffic jams, especially for trucks, in the past few months. In addition, there is now holiday traffic, which was not as pronounced last summer due to numerous corona restrictions.
French MP Pierre-Henri Dumont, whose constituency includes the French canal port of Calais, also called the travel chaos "a consequence of Brexit". "We have to carry out more checks than before," he told the BBC. There will always be traffic jams.
The port director of Dover, Doug Bannister, also initially spoke of a shortage of French border guards. However, he acknowledged that there are now "increased transaction times" after Brexit. Lucy Moreton of the UK union ISU, which represents border, immigration and customs workers, said the traffic jams were a "reasonably predictable" consequence of Britain's exit from the EU.
Here, as a contrast to the stressful travel, a video to dream: The famous Stonehenge, a view of the Milky Way or the pier of Herne Bay: In the pictures by photographer Chris Cork, the British night sky shows its most beautiful side.
