France resists plans to increase Eurostar trains despite travel chaos

FRANCE is resisting efforts to increase daily Eurostar services in a fresh twist to a row between border guards and travel companies that last week tipped millions of summer holidays into chaos.

In a dispute that will draw parallels with a row that brought Dover to standstill on Friday, border officials in Paris are at loggerheads with the Channel Tunnel train operator over its plans to add to the number of services running between London and Paris every day.

Eurostar, whose future was put in doubt last year in a funding row between France and the UK, is understood to be pushing to increase the number of services between the two capitals to 17 a day. City sources said that the desire to ramp up services was in part to honour commitments contained in leasing agreements for Eurostar’s Velaro train fleet, built by Siemens at a cost of €600m (£510m).

Failure to hit this frequency could cause financial issues with honouring lease payments in the fullness of time, sources said. However, they said that there was no suggestion of an immediate threat to the company.

French border and security officials at Gare du Nord are understood to be insisting that they can only cope with a maximum of 13 trains a day, causing a significant headache for Eurostar bosses and hitting hopes of capturing a boom in overseas travel this summer.

An extra four services would allow thousands more people to travel to the

Continent every day, easing pressure on ferries and airlines after passengers suffered flight cancellations and lengthy traffic jams around Dover.

Eurostar ran around 25 services each day before the pandemic, including to destinations such as Brussels and Amsterdam as well as Paris.

French border police and security scanning personnel claim that they are suffering from chronic staffing shortages and cannot handle more train services, sources said. One said: “It’s in no one’s interest to upset the apple cart. Getting on top of the post-pandemic surge in demand requires goodwill and collaboration on all sides.”

On Friday, border officials from Police Aux Frontières (PAF) sparked chaos at Dover amid claims that staff failed to turn up to work. France was accused of ruining the great British getaway, with less than half of the booths to check passports being open.

Speculation was rife that France had deliberately targeted holidaymakers following tensions in the wake of Britain’s split from the European Union.

The Port of Dover accused PAF of ruining British holidays.

French officials denied the allegations, insisting that there was “joint responsibility” for the chaos.

The chaos in Dover abated this weekend as PAF increased border resources to their full capacity. The turmoil instead moved to Folkestone as the Channel Tunnel grappled with the fallout from a car crash that closed the M20 for most of Friday. A spokesman for

Eurostar said: “The pressure on the travel industry post-pandemic has been well documented.

“We have deliberately chosen to increase our services gradually over the summer period, on all of our routes, to ensure we can deliver the quality of service our passengers rightly expect, and to protect our operation and our teams while we recover from the pandemic.

“We have had constructive discussions with the authorities on how we can work together to continue to increase our services.

“In Gare du Nord, the French border police have committed to increasing resources and the douanes have added staff and opened more lanes.”