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LONDON. For many, it was taken for granted that chaos would break out at the border as of 11:01 p.m. local time on December 31, 2020, when the UK officially and irreversibly left the European Union. In contrast, both yesterday and today, the situation around English Dover is decidedly calm and there were no very long lines last week due to the blockade of France and many EU countries against the ultra-contagious English variant of the coronavirus spread in the south of the UK. In fact, in the last two days, we have at times seen a single truck embark towards the Eurotunnel, with all other entrance lanes empty.
So? Another anti-Brexit cassandra, as some Eurosceptics would say? Another exaggerated and inappropriate alarm? Not quite. In reality, the flat Dover calm may simply be a pre-storm calm, for a number of reasons. The first: Fortunately for logistics and poor border agents, January 1, 2021 happened on a Friday, a relatively quiet day for road transport, anticipating the weekend, another period in which the influx of goods and goods is decidedly limited compared to the working days.
Second: many companies and carriers have explicitly avoided traveling in recent days, after what happened the following week with the closing of the borders for Covid by France and the consequent tens of kilometers of thousands of blocked trucks and lorries, and then being relegated to an old airport used as a parking lot. Not only that: several companies, according to the Financial Times, have even canceled or avoided receiving orders to and from the United Kingdom, suspending them indefinitely, waiting to see how the situation will evolve in the coming days. It is not a good sign.
Third: if a carrier wishes to travel from an undefined point in the UK to Dover, he is currently not entitled to do so unless he has a special pass to enter Kent, the region to which the port city belongs and where new variant ” English “of Coronavirus. This “license” can only be granted by the government and local authorities and no truck or truck is authorized to drive to the border without being in their possession. This is also to prevent drivers from being stuck for days in poorly-maintained Kent countryside. Even today, as the videos on social networks show, there is a lot of garbage along the roads of the province due to the problematic situation in which the unfortunate transporters found themselves days ago.
Overall, thanks to the trade agreement between the UK and the EU signed on Christmas Eve by the Johnson government and the European authorities for future relations after Brexit, in the vast majority of cases there will be no import duties or tariffs / export but the two blocs (UK or EU) may retaliate‘others and impose duties if one of them is considered a victim of unfair competition or illegal state aid from the‘other.
Yet a trade deal doesn’t rule out new lines at the border or worse, chaotic scenes like last week. Because since 1 January there is no longer the same fluidity at the borders as when the United Kingdom was part of the European single market. The distortions of this new regime, despite the‘trade deal, it remains to be seen when the flow between France and the UK will return to normal levels: for many goods, customs declarations will have to be completed which could reach around 700 million per‘year of new modules for the British (and European) bureaucracy, with thousands of new frontier workers to be recruited for London.
In short, a difficult transition, indeed a potentially huge burden. But certainly better than a brutal “No Deal ”, that is, of a‘London departure from‘EU no agreement. However, vehicle lines could still be created precisely for customs declarations and other necessary bureaucracies. Also for this reason, the United Kingdom for six months will practically not control incoming goods and merchandise, because it does not have the capacity to do so (neither as employees, nor as spaces), while Macron’s France will hardly apply customs regulations and controls de rigueur. Starting next Monday, with the restart of many road transports, we will certainly have a more realistic response.
