Stopping the train mid route and getting everybody to go through security and passport checks destroys the product. The market for Eurostar is for medium to premium fare passengers between London and Paris. Put the controls at Ashford and they'll all board at Heathrow or Gatwick instead
In theory it could still happen now between Lille and Brussels as I believe the Schengen agreement still allows for ID checks in exceptional circumstances. Certainly happened to me on the Autoroute between Calais and Belgium (I think shortly after the Paris bombings) when all traffic was routed off the motorway, round a roundabout at the bottom of a slip road, where documents were checked, then straight back up onto the motorway again.
But they have now completely destroyed the Kent market.
Your problem is that you are focussed solely on what is good for the operator. You forget that the EU is absolutely not one country too.
Absolutely true.
It was always tiny, and only ever a domestic political sop. Ashford and Ebbsfleet stops will likely come back, but they don't earn Eurostar its corn.
The Kent market is peanuts compared to the wider London & SE market.
The extra change required would destroy the Eurostar market I should imagine. Ashford station would need a complete reconstruction to facilitate the trains and the passengers - Lille probably too. Unsure what advantage (apart from improving the journey for some Kent passengers) would accrue from such an arrangement.
Speaking from experience doing that exact thing travelling Rotterdam-London: Before the direct Eurostar service existed, the solution was to go through the border checks in Brussel. This was MUCH slower than it is now, going through the exact same checks in Rotterdam, simply because the minimum connection time has to be long to allow everyone to get through the checks in time. This would be even more true at Ashford/Lille, where everyone would have to go through checks, while in Brussel many passengers where local who wouldn't all arrive at the same time.
This is obviously true if you look at the situation right now: Eurostar trains are regularly fully booked this summer, despite the massive 900-seat capacity and, to Paris at least, almost hourly service.
The Amsterdam/Rotterdam market exploded when direct trains became available both ways, and that was during COVID. Amsterdam was excluded from Eurostar sales this spring because they had already sold close to capacity from that station
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The Home Office is looking at significantly tightening, not relaxing, of UK immigration checks. No chance of your proposals happening.Actually, there's no reason why not. The major issue is that they'd have to go through French entry checks again in Calais. From a UK point of view, as long as Eurostar sent information that they had left the train in Calais after going through the UK entry checks, it wouldn't be an issue.
It's a non-issue. Let's take the Paris-Moscow trains that have stopped. Poland hosted the Schengen exit check, even though most passengers were coming from outside of Poland.
Yes, the whole point of Eurostar is that you go through passport control before departure, meaning that you can just leave the station at the other end. It works very well as a concept when dealing with Paris/Brussels, and the willingness of Border Force to staff the facilities in the Netherlands means that we have longer routes too.
What is needed, IMO, is for an agreement with the EU that intra-Schengen passengers on trains can go through border control on entry and exit when travelling between two Schengen destinations. It can be done with the right political will, and it would open up many more routes. It would, for instance, allow a Barcelona-London overnight service which would likely be tremendously popular.
There is already a precedent: Berlin-Singapore flights on Scoot were stopping in Athens. These flights required Berlin-Athens (and Athens-Berlin) travellers to go through passport control in Berlin and Athens, as it wasn't required to leave the plane in Athens.
Scoot ending Athens – Berlin ‘fifth freedom’ flights
Scoot will axe its 3-hour intra-Europe flights between Athens and Berlin at the end of this month, but the airline will retain non-stop services from Singapore to both cities.
You make it sound as if the 'willingness' of the Border Force is that they are doing this out of the kindness of their hearts - E* (and therefore the passengers through their fares) are paying fully for this!
Agreed
I seem to remember the Belgian government raising an almighty fuss about intra-Schengen passengers not being required to go through any passport control. Presumably this was as much about keeping up appearances as it was about anything rational.
As a long term civil servant l have to say that your staff costings are frankly hopeless. Training, holidays etc bump up the numbers of staff required required significantly. The capitation cost to an employer of a civil servant is about 2.5 times their salary and you better believe that a Border Force officer, especially one working shifts, is paid more than £25k. You also neglect travel costs, accommodation, subsistence etc.
But it will be a major issue. Receiving a full refund will not be good enough. The countries concerned will want no discrimination based on whether passengers get entry clearance into a country which has nothing to do with their journey. It just just not going to happen.
I think your figures are way too low. These Border Staff are going to be costing way more than £25k per year - more like a cost of at least £125k (and that with foreign service allowances, pension contributions, travel costs, accommodation etc etc. (So £2.5 million per year) They are not going to be UK citizens who happen to live in Barcelona [esp. since ending of FoM for UK citizens]. You have not taken into account the costs of leave cover, sickness etc. or the management of these staff (say another £650k) You have not taken to account the costs of security at immigration should anyone get out of control. (say another £750k). With security on the platforms to prevent unauthorised boardings (say another £750k). Plus you'll have to pay for the Spanish immigration authorities to be present (another £1m?) The cost is going to be multiple millions . It is highly unlikely that there is going to be business for four trains per day from Barcelona to London, and no way these are going to have the kind of occupancy levels day in-day out that you predict (esp. night trains with sleepers) . Higher costs, fewer passengers - the border control costs are already beyond £10 per ticket.
I think it highly unlikely that E* would be 'folding the cost of the visa-waiver' into the ticket price. What other transport operation does that? They would want to have the cheapest headline ticket price! The visa waiver would be required, because you have already said that all the passengers would have to be UK entry cleared, even if they are alighting within the Schengen Zone [because they might not alight].
Thus isn't really feasible since it would effectively be turning Eurostsr into an agent for the visa waiver, which means taking on a hell of a lot of risk if you make a mistake. It would also penalise people who don't need the visa waiver, either because they've got visas or because they hold other right to travel like dual nationality. Far easier to make passengers responsible for sorting their travel documents and then checking what they give you at the end of the process.
Integrated ticket at all opportunities would certainly help. Having multiple tickets for each leg is less of an issue than having a published itinerary and a single transaction and protection against delays on the connecting services.
You really don't have the first clue how the Home Office operates. Or indeed how the UK plans to do immigration control in the future. I suggest that you google Future Borders and Immigration System and Border Force review.
There is the massive risk of Eurostar now handling sensitive data on behalf of passengers. The US Visa waiver required last time I did it, about 15 years ago: Name, Address, Passport details, Date of Birth, Host address, questions surrounding the purpose of my trip, questions about my criminal history, questions about whether or not I've participated in terrorist activity. Has the UK Visa Waiver questionnaire been announced yet? I suspect it'll contain something similar, even if not quite as detailed as the US one. Does Eurostar want to handle all his data on behalf of it's customers? Not a chance. It would require additional admin staff to process, maintain and update the questionnaires and to ensure that only people who need the visa waiver go through it. Eurostar would also become responsible to the Home Office for providing the complete set of information and it's accuracy. Do you discount the ticket for people who do not require, or are not eligible for a Visa Waiver? How do you confirm somebody does not need one? Are you distributing the waiver in advance or are you just going to tell people when they scan at the gate?
Let's put it this way, l work very very closely with the Home Office. Thankfully l've never worked on immigration but know lots of people who do.
It could happen, but it is really unlikely, and even then only as a niche product. Who are all these travellers going from Barcelona to Lille anyway? Where are they going? It doesn't strike me as a major traffic route to be worth investing any great resource into.
Read the 2025 Border Strategy? I was involved in writing it! As ever there is a balance to be struck between commercial advantage and national security.
You are getting rather silly. Who is going to be making sure that the documentation is correct and that nobody is allowed to slip through who is not correctly documented? Will you trust your trained monkey or Pablo? Yeah right!
