Road traffic at the British port of Dover returned to normal on Sunday and a delay due to traffic jams blamed on a lack of French border police personnel was lifted, the port said.
So far, during this weekend of great vacation departures for the British, for the first year without travel restrictions since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, 72,000 passengers have passed through the port, which represents for road traffic one of the main access points. to the mainland, with the Channel Tunnel.
Back to normal this Sunday
Wanting to reassure users, the port believes it has shown that “its plan for the summer will work during the rest of the holiday period”, “as it did by absorbing large volumes of tourist and merchandise traffic to return to normal on Sunday morning. tomorrow in the first hours”.
On the other hand, difficulties are reported towards the coast on the M20 motorway, where thousands of trucks are stored as part of a system aimed at avoiding congestion at the border.
The Channel Tunnel reported delays this Sunday morning, with a one and a half hour delay between check-in and boarding of the ferries.
Lack of labor at the border
On Friday, many tourists were stuck for hours before gaining access to the port due, according to British authorities, to the lack of French border police personnel to check passports.
On the French side, the prefect of the Hauts-de-France region, Georges-François Leclerc, admitted a delay of around an hour on Friday morning in the full implementation of the planned system, but expressed doubts about the fact that this delay, attributed to unforeseeable incidents, is sufficient to explain the magnitude of the disturbances.
He pointed his finger, France responds
Like other actors, union or port officials, he underlined the role of Brexit in the unrest, an explanation dismissed by London. In a tweet late Saturday, British Chancellor Liz Truss, campaigning to succeed Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said she explained to her French counterpart Catherine Colonna that “the French authorities have not put enough people on the border” .
“Good conversation with [Liz Truss] about traffic difficulties near Dover. We welcome the cooperation between the competent technical services to reduce delays. There is also a need to improve the facilities at the port of Dover,” French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna wrote.
For his part, Clément Beaune stressed on Saturday at the end of the day that “the French authorities [étaient] mobilized to control [les] borders and facilitate traffic as much as possible.” “But France is not responsible for Brexit,” he said.
Source: BFM TV
