France calls on UK to share customs costs
BRITAIN is facing demands to help France pay for the cost of setting up new customs posts at its Channel ports after Brexit.
Theresa May will meet Emmanuel Macron, the French president, next month, The Daily Telegraph has learnt, when the issue is likely to be raised.
Leading Brexiteers described the idea as “absurd” and said Britain must not pay “a penny more” than it has already agreed to, but French politicians and officials believe Britain should contribute towards the cost of tighter border controls, as it currently does under the Le Touquet treaty.
Mr Macron is under significant pressure to raise with Mrs May the impact of Brexit on Channel ports when he comes to London for the talks. New customs infrastructure will need to be in place before Britain formally leaves the EU.
Senior French politicians and civil servants have held a series of meetings with their British counterparts to try to work out how to tackle it, according to Jean-paul Mulot, the regional envoy to the UK for Hauts-de-france, which includes Calais, Boulogne, Dunkirk and the Eurotunnel entrance.
Mr Mulot said the cost, which has been estimated at hundreds of millions of pounds, should be shared with Britain and the rest of the EU, but Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, said: “There is no logical or legal reason why Britain should pay anything towards this. It is an absurdity.
“No other country is asking for money; not Holland, not Belgium, and Mrs May should remind Mr Macron that he stands to benefit from this arrangement because France sells more goods to us than we sell to them.
“Theresa May can smile sweetly at Mr Macron and tell him there will not be a penny more than has already been agreed. We have already said how much we will pay, and if the EU wants to give some of that money to France that’s up to them.”
British officials have reportedly dismissed the idea of contributing to infrastructure in France, but Mr Mulot hoped that the UK would “agree to provide some funding eventually”.