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reThe border is open again, but the end of the traffic jam is far from visible: due to the newly discovered variant of the coronavirus in Britain, thousands of truck drivers facing the English Channel had to wait in the kilometer-long traffic jam. on Christmas’ Eve.
“We have agreed that the Franco-British border at the Eurotunnel, Dover and Calais should remain open during Christmas so that truckers and citizens can return home as soon as possible,” British Transport Minister Grant Shapps wrote on Thursday On twitter. His French colleague Jean-Baptiste Djebbari confirmed the deal.
Due to the rapid spread of the new and possibly particularly contagious Corona variant in Britain, France had closed borders and only reopened them on Wednesday night.
From the major British port of Dover and via the Eurotunnel, goods can be transferred back to France after days off. However, since France wants to see a negative corona test of every driver upon entry, thousands of people waiting have to wait, including a few hundred from Germany. Fewer than 100 vehicles left the port of Dover late Wednesday, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority news agency said on Thursday.
French firefighters and British Army forces should help test as many drivers as possible. In addition to 15 members of the fire brigade and 10 civil defense volunteers, 10,000 corona tests were also sent across the English Channel, the prefecture of the Hauts-de-France region in northern France announced on Thursday. France.
On the French side of the English Channel, they also prepared for extra shifts: “The port will be open tomorrow,” the head of the Calais port administration, Jean-Marc Puissesseau, announced on Thursday, according to the AFP news agency.
Even on Christmas Eve, these trucks are still stuck in traffic on the way to Dover.
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Image: AFP
The major ferry port is usually closed at Christmas. In the morning two ferries arrived with a total of around 100 trucks on board. Typically, a ferry can be loaded with 120 trucks. “Traffic will depend on (Corona’s) testing capacity in Britain,” said the port chief.
EU Transport Commissioner Adina Valean blamed France for the truck chaos in south-east England. “I condemn that France has gone against our recommendations and has returned us to the situation we were in in March, when the supply chains were broken,” Valean tweeted Thursday night.
The commissioner called on EU member states to relax rest periods and lift holiday driving bans so drivers can return to their families on Christmas days. Many of them had already spent several days in traffic and their nerves were on edge; sometimes there were clashes with the police.
