Freight trucks were already being held up at Dover port on Saturday. Photo / Getty Images
Freight trucks were already being held up at Dover port on Saturday. Photo / Getty Images
At least 10 European countries banned travel from the UK on Sunday amid concern over a more infectious new strain of Covid-19 in Britain, with France calling a halt to freight transport across the English Channel.
Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands were among the first countriesto bar people coming from the UK after a sharp rise in coronavirus cases.
The move by Paris to impose a 48-hour block on people and truck-borne freight coming into France from Britain from Monday prompted the closure of transport services across the English Channel, notably between Dover and Calais.
It raised the prospect of crippling delays on the UK's main freight link with the EU, which usually handles up to 10,000 trucks a day.
Boris Johnson, British prime minister, will chair an emergency meeting of officials on Monday to discuss ways to ensure the flow of freight into the UK.
It comes at a fraught moment in Britain's negotiations to leave the EU, with talks on a trade deal continuing ahead of the UK's scheduled departure from the single market on January 1.
After an emergency inner cabinet meeting, the office of the French prime minister, Jean Castex, announced on Sunday: "It has been decided to suspend . . . all movements of people, including those related to freight transport, by road, air, sea or rail coming from the UK . . . The flow of people and transport into the UK is not affected."
The order temporarily brings the English Channel freight route to a stop. Half of all goods traded between the UK and the EU, and about 90 per cent of truck traffic, crosses the channel at the Dover Strait.
French officials said the 48-hour suspension will allow time for the 27 EU member states to co-ordinate their response. They envisage a system allowing traffic from the UK, with pre-departure Covid-19 tests, from December 22.
The road approaches in England and France to the main freight routes across the English Channel had already been congested for two weeks, largely because of stockpiling by UK companies ahead of the imposition of customs controls between Britain and the EU on January 1.
The French move caused alarm in UK industry. Although freight was still allowed into England from France, hauliers were questioning whether to make the journey if lorries could not return.
"While goods can enter from France, few haulage firms will be willing to send trucks and drivers across to the UK without a guarantee they can return to the EU in a timely manner," said the British Retail Consortium.
On Sunday Eurotunnel announced its service from the UK to the continent would be suspended for passengers and freight traffic from 11pm for 48 hours because of the French initiative.
Soon afterwards the Port of Dover announced it was closing its ferry terminal to traffic bound for France. Meanwhile, Eurostar announced it was not running trains between London, Brussels and Amsterdam on Monday, as well as Paris and Lille.
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Photo / AP
The Road Haulage Association said the Eurotunnel service would still bring traffic into Britain from the EU. It was waiting to hear confirmation that ferry operators would run empty vessels from Dover to France in order to return with lorries from the EU.
Richard Burnett, head of the group, said the government would have no choice but to start Operation Stack, the queueing system on the M20 motorway in Kent used to handle lorry backlogs during weather and technical delays.
"The problem is that if you're an EU haulier coming to the UK and you know that Operation Stack is in place, then are you likely to go to the UK, knowing you'll get stuck? The answer is that a lot will not, and not just before Christmas," he said. "This is now going to test the government to see if they really can handle a crisis of this kind."
The new, more contagious strain is understood to have originated in south-east England but has already been found in Denmark, Italy and Australia.
Germany, which holds the EU presidency, called an emergency meeting of the bloc's representatives for Monday to discuss a co-ordinated response.
President Emmanuel Macron of France, who is in isolation after contracting Covid-19, spoke to Angela Merkel, German chancellor, as well as EU Commission and Council presidents Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel, the Elysée Palace said.
The German government said on Sunday afternoon that it was introducing an "immediate and temporary" ban on UK flights "to protect the population of Germany".
Jens Spahn, the health minister, said: "It's important to stop it coming into Germany, into continental Europe."
The Netherlands confirmed it had detected a case of the same strain in early December and was investigating. KLM is flying planes from the UK to Amsterdam with cargo but not passengers. It is still taking passengers on inbound flights to the UK.
Ireland banned flights and passenger ferries from Britain from midnight on Sunday for at least two days. Ferry crossings will continue to keep supply chains moving.
- Reporting by Jim Pickard, Sam Fleming, Peter Foster, Guy Chazan, Victor Mallet, Daniel Dombey, Davide Ghiglione, Leslie Hook, Arthur Beesley, Sam Jones and Richard Milne.
