Whose fault is it ? France and the United Kingdom blame each other for the monster traffic jams that have formed at the port of Dover in the past 48 hours, reports the British channel Sky News.
As the school holidays begin in Great Britain, a flood of travelers wishing to take the ferry to reach continental Europe has been added since Friday to the usual traffic of heavy goods vehicles transiting through the port of Dover, where they must submit to customs controls.
These plugs caused a “violent diplomatic quarrel” between the United Kingdom and France, notes the Guardian. Foreign Minister Liz Truss and former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, all “two candidates for the leadership of the tory party, hastened to blame” France, notes the British daily. They blamed the slowness of controls on a lack of French customs officers responsible for carrying out border controls.
Holidays “ruined”
“Insufficient staff at the French border ruins the start of the holidays” of the British, also accused the port of Dover in a press release on Friday morning, deploring lines of stationary cars and exasperated passengers.
On the French side, we refuse to bear the responsibility for traffic jams. Union officials, port officials and French authorities highlighted on Saturday the role of Brexit in the significant traffic difficulties encountered by British holidaymakers en route to the continent.
Simon Calder, daily columnist The Independent also points to the impact of the UK’s exit from the EU. “In Dover on Saturday morning, I wandered among the many stressed families to observe the root cause of the problem. In my experience, the time taken by the French border authorities to process each car used to be measured in seconds […]. The average per vehicle is now over a minute” because since Brexit, “every passport must be inspected and stamped”, he observes.