Brexit

[Uninformed]

Oh, I think it isn't finished yet, descending into 3rd worldliness.

The snowball has only just started to think about rolling…

[zekeb]

Oh, I think it isn't finished yet, descending into 3rd worldliness.

Sad to say. We can overcome our huge mistake in electing Trump. The UK has no real way to escape the madness of Brexit.

Overcoming Trump is like repairing collision damage on an exotic car. The damage is done and it takes years to undo.

[RTH10260]

NB. same requirements as for airports, except that airports ae already set up to handle this type of checks on the pre-registration of entry

Why travelling on Eurostar from the UK is about to become much trickier
New requirements for face scans and fingerprints from 6 October threaten delays at the border

Gwyn Topham transport correspondent
Sun 26 May 2024 13.00 CEST

In a land just 20 miles from Britain, people can catch an international train just by buying a ticket and turning up. For Eurostar travellers from London it has never been that simple. But from 6 October, when the EU’s new border regime kicks in, a fresh headache of requirements will apply.

There may be some comfort in Eurostar’s promise that it “won’t be a shitshow”. It has spent a year discussing the precise requirements of the EU entry-exit system (EES), and invested €10m in revamping St Pancras International.

Here Benugo, an upmarket toastie purveyor, is being ejected from its prime spot to make way for rows of biometric kiosks. Passengers will have to upload their fingerprints and scan their faces, then walk – or queue – past the piano donated by Elton John to the ticket gates. Once they’re through those, the baggage screening and UK passport control, French border police will take their fingerprints all over again.

Eurostar says its modelling shows passengers will be able to complete the process within the recommended 60 to 90 minutes before travel, though some reports last week claimed it would take two hours.

Eurostar’s chief stations and security officer, Simon Lejeune, said: “We’re confident 6 October won’t be a shitshow because of the work that’s going in … we have the right set-up.”

The bar for what is regarded as a “shitshow” in Britain has been raised substantially since the 2016 referendum, but these increasing hurdles will make some travellers wonder if just staying home to watch Emily in Paris or Ratatouille might be easier.

For Eurostar, the key is capacity – or how quickly passengers can pass the frontier, and it is installing 49 kiosks in three areas: the other two are for business or premier passengers and an upstairs overflow set-up for when things get hairy at peak times. The double fingerprint check is necessary because biometric data collection must be supervised by a European border officer on first entry. After registration, people will be able to use e-gates for three years. France has agreed to double the police aux frontières booths from nine to 18.

Brexit had already cut capacity on trains to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam: the stamping of paper passports was taking so long that trains were not able to fill up and depart on time. Now, Eurostar hopes to cut the last part of the border process from 59 to 37 seconds.

The Port of Dover has raised the alarm over how, in a constrained space, arriving car passengers can have all their biometric details taken by EU officials. The CPT, the trade body for coach operators, this week called on ministers for action, warning that EES would “inevitably add to processing time” at the port. Getlink, the Channel tunnel and Shuttle operator, has announced spending of about €70m on measures to avoid a launch-day meltdown.

The scheme has been delayed by concerns over back-end computing capabilities and staffing, and the French lobbied hard to put EES back until after the Paris Olympics.



https://www.theguardian.com/business/ar ... h-trickier

[RTH10260]

Post-Brexit ‘mess’ as Italian driver’s lorry held for 55 hours at UK border post
Antonio Soprano says he was told to walk to a McDonald’s for food as there was none at Sevington

Jack Simpson and Angela Giuffrida
Mon 10 Jun 2024 13.45 CEST

An Italian lorry driver has described the UK’s new post-Brexit controls as a “mess” after his lorry was held at a government-run border post for more than two days.

Antonio Soprano, 62, who was stopped while bringing plants into the country from central Italy, said he was offered nothing to eat during his 55-hour ordeal and instead was told by border officials that he should walk to a McDonald’s more than a mile away to get a meal.

After eventually being released from the Sevington facility in Ashford, Kent, in the early hours of the morning, he was then clamped and had to pay a £185 fine after difficulties finding a place to park in the middle of the night.

It comes just over a month after the government brought in new post-Brexit rules on 30 April, which require some lorries transporting plant and animal goods from the continent to be checked at designated border control posts along the British coast.

The checks, which have been put in place to stop diseases coming into the UK, are supposed to take place within four working hours but some lorries can be held for longer if inspectors identify a potential risk.

Soprano, who drives for the Italian haulage company Marini, was taking a lorry full of plants from Italian suppliers to companies across Britain when he was ordered to drive the 22 miles from Dover to the Sevington border post for inspection.

A Marini truck is loaded with plants at the Innocenti and Mangoni nursery in Pistoia, Italy. Photograph: Michele Borzoni/The Guardian
He says that when he arrived at the facility he was immediately ushered to a waiting area and ordered to wait, with border officials taking his keys.

Soprano, who speaks no English, said no efforts were made to explain to him what was happening, claiming he was just repeatedly told by officials to wait. The waiting facilities for drivers consist of a small room with a few tables, with only water provided and no food.

He said: “They told me to go and eat at a McDonald’s, which was 2km away, so by foot. In the end I found a supermarket but we had no services apart from a toilet.”

The lorry was held because of concerns about 10 Prunus lusitanica plants in the load, which border officials thought could be carrying harmful pests.

The concerns were raised hours after the lorry arrived at 6.30pm on 26 May, and officials said the delays occurred because the plants could not be unloaded because of health and safety concerns.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the initial inspection of the lorry was delayed due to the driver having to take an 11-hour rest break, known as a tacho break, while at Sevington. It said the absence of a load plan, and problems with the way the lorry was loaded, meant extra measures were needed to safely check the plants.

Officials eventually signed off the plants and allowed the vehicle to be released just after 1am on 29 May, about 55 hours after it arrived.



https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ar ... -sevington

[RTH10260]

remember, you now can export world wide ...

UK clothing sales to EU plummet as Brexit red tape deters exporters
Small and medium-sized firms badly hit as huge drop in apparel sales helps fuel 18% slide in all-non food exports

Phillip Inman
Wed 5 Jun 2024 01.01 CEST

UK exports of clothing and footwear to the EU have dived since Brexit, according to a new study that shows the extent to which complex regulations and red tape at the border have deterred firms from sending goods across the Channel.

Exports of clothing and footwear sold to EU countries have fallen from £7.4bn in 2019 to £2.7bn in 2023, helping fuel an 18% slump in sales of all non-food goods exports to countries covered by the EU single market, according to the consultancy Retail Economics and online marketplace Tradebyte.

The report said the decline meant British brands and retailers have seen sales to the EU plummet since Brexit, despite a flourishing European e-commerce market.

The only sectors to increase export sales over the same period were health and beauty, and DIY and gardening, offsetting some of the fall from clothing and footwear.

Many of the worst affected were small and medium-sized businesses, which faced a larger relative burden from red tape than multinational firms.

One of the report’s authors, Richard Lim, head of Retail Economics, said some of the fall was simply down to a change in trade routes. UK firms that previously repackaged imports of goods made in Asia for sale in the EU have now reorganised their supply chains, by setting up offices inside the single market to bypass border regulations.

However, red tape has forced many producers making apparel in the UK to move manufacturing to an EU country, at a cost to UK skills and jobs.

In one instance a sock-maker based in Leicester, which declined to be named, has shifted production to Italy, ending more than 100 years of manufacturing in the east Midlands, Lim said.

The UK has also failed to benefit from a boom in online goods sales in the EU since 2019, the authors suggest.



https://www.theguardian.com/business/ar ... -exporters

[RTH10260]

Dutch lorry drivers could stop bringing goods to UK if post-Brexit delays not cut
Dutch hauliers say facilities at border posts where some trucks are held for up to 20 hours are inadequate

Jack Simpson
Thu 13 Jun 2024 13.01 CEST

Lorry drivers could start rejecting jobs transporting goods from continental Europe to the UK unless delays are reduced and driver conditions improved at post-Brexit border posts, the biggest trade body for Dutch hauliers has warned.

Transport en Logistiek Nederland (TLN), which represents 5,000 Dutch transport companies, said its members were facing average waits of more than four hours in Britain because of the new checks brought in after the UK’s exit from the EU, with some being held at border posts for up to 20 hours.

It described the facilities that drivers were forced to wait in as “leaving a lot to be desired” and said most border facilities only offered water, with nowhere for drivers to get food or drink.

In a four-page report outlining drivers’ experiences and shared with the Guardian, the association said: “We are increasingly receiving reports from hauliers that their drivers no longer want to drive to the UK unless conditions improve.”

The report listed a series of problems Dutch lorry companies and drivers had experienced since the government brought in border checks for plant and animal products on 30 April.

The checks, which have been put in place to stop diseases coming into the UK, take place at designated border control posts near ports such as Killingholme, Harwich and Felixstowe. The biggest is an inland, government-run facility at Sevington, Ashford, which serves the Port of Dover despite being 22 miles away.

TLN has raised concerns about the delays and poor conditions greeting drivers at these posts and called for the UK government and port authorities to provide “good and decent facilities for drivers”.



https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ar ... h-hauliers