Brexit checks make a quiet debut
>> LONDON: At the ports and terminals on the UK’s southeastern coast, a new era began on Friday morning without much fuss. Ferries and trains that carry goods to France from Dover and Folkestone were running on time, and drivers snaked their trucks into the port unencumbered by congestion.
To all appearances, little may have changed on Jan 1, the country’s first day outside the European Union. It was, after all, a public holiday, and not much business was taking place.
But for the first time in more than 25 years, goods travelling between the UK and EU will no longer move freely, and customs checks will be enforced for goods entering the bloc.
A trade deal, signed into law in the UK in the early hours of Thursday, means the UK and the EU will trade goods without tariffs. Businesses, however, will still face significant changes that they had been urged to prepare for even during the coronavirus lockdowns, closures and other social restrictions.
The changes are bound to bring “bumpy moments,” a top Cabinet minister predicted this week. The government expects new customs paperwork alone to cost British businesses £7 billion (287 billion baht) a year. The EU is Britain’s largest trading partner, with £670 billion of imports and exports, and Britain imports far more goods from the bloc than it exports.
Britain has at least 150,000 exporters who have never sent their goods beyond the bloc, according to data from the country’s tax agency, and will therefore need to make customs declarations for the first time. Border checks within the EU were scrapped in 1993.
This is a change that will be immediately felt at Britain’s ports, especially the busy Port of Dover and the Eurotunnel terminus at Folkestone, which connect the country to France. But Friday, with most business halted for New Year’s Day, trains and ferries were reported to be running smoothly. Eurotunnel reported that 200 trucks had used its shuttle train by 8am, with all the
correct documents.
“It does seem pretty calm,” Elizabeth De Jong, the policy director of Logistics UK, told Sky News on Friday.
But she added that businesses now faced “a new, different language of customs arrangements” that would need to be understood. She described the next few weeks as a live trial.
Away from the Dover-Calais crossing, there were some early hiccups.
Passengers stepping off the Eurostar train from London at the Gare du Nord found new customs checks awaiting them.
Six trucks bound for Ireland, a member of the EU, were turned away from boarding a ferry at Holyhead, a port in Wales, according to Stena Line, a ferry operator. The drivers did not have the authorisation now required for trucks crossing from Britain into Ireland.
The ferry company, sensing an opportunity in Brexit’s potential headaches, has increased the number of direct sailings it offers between Ireland and France, bypassing Britain and the need for customs checks.
In what the UK has described as a
worst-case scenario, 40–70% of trucks heading to the EU might not be ready for the new border checks. This could lead to lines of up to 7,000 trucks heading to the border and delays of up to two days, according to a UK government report.
Britain has only recently cleared a huge backlog of trucks from the border. On Dec 20, France suddenly closed its border for 48 hours to stop the spread of a new coronavirus variant from England. Thousands of trucks were stranded for days. Once the border reopened, the drivers were then required to show a negative coronavirus test result.
The delays at the normally fast-moving port also raised concerns about Britain’s supply of fresh food, much of which is imported from the rest of Europe in the winter.
The spectacle amplified concerns about trade after Dec 31, the end of the transition period. Goods are already moving more slowly because drivers’ coronavirus tests can take about 40 minutes to deliver results. Some ferry crossings between Dover and Calais were cancelled on Friday afternoon because of low demand.