Brexit Eurostar

[Gadget88]

I read they will want longer checks and more queues will France really want to do this and possibly hit passenger numbers and tourism? We already see how silly it is with Amsterdam you can go direct one way but not the return leg yet.

 

[Mag_seven]

I read they will want longer checks and more queues will France really want to do this and possibly hit passenger numbers and tourism? We already see how silly it is with Amsterdam you can go direct one way but not the return leg yet.

Longer time in Paris Gare Du Nord to admire your shiny new blue passport.

 

[duesselmartin]

Longer time in Paris Gare Du Nord to admire your shiny new blue passport.

EU ID cards were scrutinised in detail for minutes at BXL Midi last sunday. With all the security hassle, Eurostar is loosing the edge for passengers not going to the Ile de France or Belgium but further.

Brexit will most likely hit the brussels route with less EU staff ect. going to and from London.

 

[Groningen]

I think that which ever mode of transportation you choose (plane, boat, train) treatment will be the same. Minimum checkin time is now 30 minutes?! Will that than be increased? I think it has nothing to do with Brexit.

 

[edwin_m]

Nobody knows what the arrangements will be. Passport checks are already done and shouldn't change much unless there is a total breakdown in relations. However it's possible that the loss of a customs union would result in more stringent checks of the goods people are taking with them, which might be integrated with the existing baggage checks.

 

[dutchflyer]

Oh no-that latter (integration-2 in 1) wont happen. As is also the case at any airport.
From the viewpoint here at the continent and the remaining EU, its the Brits who have chosen to leave (with a tiny majority), still do not know how to handle this case, have some stray former ministers trying to score their own points. Its also the brits who have chosen to remain out of the Schengen zone- so they are mostly their at own fault of hindering traffic.

 

[Polarbear]

The E* terminals can be somewhat congested at times as things stand. If additional checks have to be implemented, I can see St Pancras coming to a complete standstill.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The White Paper promises to continue EU procedures for Eurostar and Enterprise (Belfast-Dublin) cross-border services.
It also wants continued visa-free travel to/from the EU27 and a comprehensive travel agreement.
But we don't know what the EU thinks about the White Paper yet.
They have so far taken a hard line on things like UK participation in Galileo and policing where you wouldn't have expected a problem.
Every time Theresa May mentions "ending free movement" the tension notches up a bit.

 

[Giugiaro]

The most that could happen would be extra time to go past customs, if the UK leaves the European Market. Besides that, I don't see how different would border checks change compared to nowadays, given that the country never was part of the Schengen Area. Maybe have a harder look at Visas and Permits?

 

[edwin_m]

The most that could happen would be extra time to go past customs, if the UK leaves the European Market. Besides that, I don't see how different would border checks change compared to nowadays, given that the country never was part of the Schengen Area. Maybe have a harder look at Visas and Permits?

The customs checks are mainly related to the customs union, which is not the same thing as the single market. But I agree even if we have a visa system, which would be a pretty disgraceful failure on someone's part, I would hope the existing passport check would just confirm that the appropriate paperwork had been completed previously. Having said that, I guess it's possible we could end up with a US-style system where people can hours going through immigration.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Nobody knows what the arrangements will be. Passport checks are already done and shouldn't change much unless there is a total breakdown in relations. However it's possible that the loss of a customs union would result in more stringent checks of the goods people are taking with them, which might be integrated with the existing baggage checks.

The French may add something, but the UK customs approach even for non-EU countries is very targeted and doesn't involve routine checks. It's rare to see them even there at an airport.

 

[leshuttle]

The White Paper promises to continue EU procedures for Eurostar and Enterprise (Belfast-Dublin) cross-border services.

Belfast-Dublin Enterprise has zero passport checks (or "EU procedures") as it stands. At the risk of undoing The Good Friday Agreement and having a hard border: completely new infrastructure for customs checks would be needed at Belfast, Dublin, Portadown, Newry, Dundalk and Drogheda stations.

 

[TheSeeker]

Went through Le Shuttle with my Belgian ID card a couple of weeks ago.

"What is the purpose of your visit Mr Lewis?"
"I'm going home to Wales for a wedding"
"Home?"

I think UKBA have already had the Brexit training course.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That sounds like "the racist training course" - I think certain UKBA officers have been going on that for years

 

[Groningen]

So 20 years ago i went for the first time to Ireland and my first visit was to Belfast and Londonderry from Dublin. I can not remember any (additional) bordercontrol or extra police/soldiers than. But maybe it is deleted from my memory.

 

[duesselmartin]

1996 years ago I travelled Dublin to Belfast. No checks.

 

[Wivenswold]

I've been reading through a sobering report by Think Tank the Institute for Government entitled "Implementing Brexit Customs" On Hard Brext it says...
"Leaving the EU with ‘no deal’ would introduce friction that is greater than that faced by any of the EU’s other major trading partners. For UK customs, it would involve the greatest amount of change in the least amount of time, with a huge increase in demand on capacity and capability at the border. New systems, staff and infrastructure would need to be in place for 29 March 2019"

It looks like the terminals will have to be expanded at the very least but this, to me, seems like an absolute nightmare scenario for freight and passenger services and could stretch resources to breaking point. Would existing track access rights have to be renegotiated? And the trains, who owns them? It's going to be a nightmare but could the tunnel end up being mothballed?

 

[Sebastian O]

 

[Oxfordblues]

I remember when I worked for Railfreight International visiting Dover Western Docks and taking a look inside the Customs Shed. HM Customs & Excise had ordered a complete out-turn of a VTG van loaded with vermouth from France. Every case had to be manually carried onto the platform for inspection to ensure nothing was being smuggled. I imagine similar scenes in future (except, of course, involving road trucks rather than rail wagons).

 

[route101]

Whenever ive landed at a UK airport apart from LHR there has been no Customs officers. You never see them at Glasgow .
How does it work with Customs entering /exiting Swtizerland?

 

[InterCity:125]

Switzerland is in the schengen area

 

[route101]

Switzerland is in the schengen area

Yeah but there is Customs Check s , im sure i seen an area at Geneva Station for this though there was no trains to France boarding at that time.

 

[TheSeeker]

If you land at Schiphol from outside the EU the customs are really hot. "Show me some images on this camera", "Are these the clothes you left with" etc. All this will be coming back at Heathrow once the UK is a third country. The scene in The Lavender Hill Mob comes to mind, when they are trying to run through customs, and that's just to get out of the country.

 

[yorksrob]

I went through customs at St Pancras and had my bag searched when I went last year. If things get more intemate, I shall probably stick with Blighty.

 

[Please Explain]

Yeah but there is Customs Check s , im sure i seen an area at Geneva Station for this though there was no trains to France boarding at that time.

They are in Schengen -(no regular pass control), but not in the EU customs union. Hence, why customs controls are still in place at the frontiers by the Grenzwache, albeit "random" and "intelligence based".

They could often be seen in the evenings at Bâle SNCF checking the passports and luggage of "suspicious individuals" coming off the EuroCity Iris from Brussel as well as le Vauban and Jean Monnet in the afternoons...
Other times, you could walk straight off the train through the checkpoint and see no one..
Same across town at the Bad Bahnhof, but they have now gone as far as removing the Zoll checkpoint there altogether, but I believe the Grenzwache and the German Bundespolizei still have their offices there and now just conduct their random and intel based checks onboard trains in the border area rather than at the actual border checkpoint.
Go up to the main border crossing at Weil am Rein however and you will see them and the Bundespolizei manning the checkpoint just about 24/7 and patrolling the local streets on both sides of the border, pulling over cars, buses trams for random checks.
I have never seen any activity at the border with St Louis though.

Over in Genève as you say, the Douane control check point is certainly still in place, complete with X-ray ops and you will often see them there when TER's to and from France are arriving and departing. Last time I passed through there in March of last year coming off a corail TER from Lyon however, the place was deserted.. Again, random and intel based...
A similar regime to Basel exists at the many road checkpoints with local patrols on both sides around the frontier of Genève with her French suburbs.

You can often see the French Douane conducting their checks usually in plain clothes onboard trains in border areas all over the country.

 

[James James]

Went through Le Shuttle with my Belgian ID card a couple of weeks ago.

"What is the purpose of your visit Mr Lewis?"
"I'm going home to Wales for a wedding"
"Home?"

I think UKBA have already had the Brexit training course.

It's a valid question. Travelling to a country of citizenship without showing a document of that country can be problematic, and in some cases is illegal (not illegal in the case of the UK, but still potentially problematic). Of course, I'm presuming that you do also have British citizenship, but that's unclear from the excerpts above.

 

[jamesontheroad]

I read they will want longer checks and more queues will France really want to do this and possibly hit passenger numbers and tourism? We already see how silly it is with Amsterdam you can go direct one way but not the return leg yet.

To return to the original question, St Pancras may require some reconfiguration.

Arriving passengers all pass through a large hall at the base of the inclined travelators and escalators from the platforms. This has plenty of room of UKBA to install a snaking queue to immigration checks. So there is space to accommodate the queues that checks will generate.

Departing it will be more complicated. The French controls just beyond security could become more lengthy, which leaves no room for a back log of departing passengers. Extending the 30 minute check in time is not going to solve this - there needs to be room to accommodate a queue of people between security and French/Belgian immigration.

 

[edwin_m]

To return to the original question, St Pancras may require some reconfiguration.

Arriving passengers all pass through a large hall at the base of the inclined travelators and escalators from the platforms. This has plenty of room of UKBA to install a snaking queue to immigration checks. So there is space to accommodate the queues that checks will generate.

Departing it will be more complicated. The French controls just beyond security could become more lengthy, which leaves no room for a back log of departing passengers. Extending the 30 minute check in time is not going to solve this - there needs to be room to accommodate a queue of people between security and French/Belgian immigration.

I believe the UK wants to do immigration checks before boarding so that someone who shouldn't be on board can't just pull the handle when a train leaves the Tunnel, operate an emergency door release and disappear off. Hence the faintly ridiculous situation of passing through two passport checks in succession before boarding at any of the termini. Whereas customs always seems to be done on arrival so the hall in the arrivals area might be more used if whatever happens results in more checks. However it's difficult to see how this could work at Gare du Nord where arrivals are just off the end of the platform into the main station and there's no space to add extra facilities.

 

[185]

That sounds like "the racist training course" - I think certain UKBA officers have been going on that for years

"Kick em out!"

 

[route101]

I went through customs at St Pancras and had my bag searched when I went last year. If things get more intemate, I shall probably stick with Blighty.

Was that inbound or outbound ?