Brexit means borders – as coach travellers at Dover are discovering

Just as Rishi Sunak gained parliamentary consent to a deal with the EU to lessen the impact of one post-Brexit border, another border problem flared up.

The Windsor Framework was designed to lessen the impact of imposing an international goods border in the middle of the internal market of a united nation. The initial agreement, in Boris Johnson’s protocol, meant the UK was committed to operating the EU’s external goods frontier between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Not surprisingly, that had a bunch of foreseen and less foreseen impacts on the citizens and businesses on the wrong side of the divide. The Framework was designed to alleviate the most glaring problems.

Delays in Dover arise on a different border and affect travellers rather than goods. But the root cause is similar. The volumes of passengers (and freight) travelling through Dover worked in a regime when light-touch controls were the order of the day when both France and the UK were members of the EU. The UK was not in Schengen, so the border was not completely invisible, but it could cope with big numbers, with many passengers waved through with minimal formalities. So passenger traffic grew up on the assumption of fast processing.

Brexit changed that. Crossing the Channel now means crossing the EU’s external frontier and UK passport holders are now subject to all the same checks that the EU applies to other third country travellers. That means: restrictions on length of stay in the EU, potential questions about resources and reasons to visit, and passport stamps. It is no surprise that pre-Brexit traffic volumes combined with post-Brexit checks leave the border much more vulnerable to delays.

Things can only get grimmer at the border

We have not yet reached peak delay.

At some point in the future fingerprinting will be needed to register into the EU’s new entry and exit system, and advance application for the EU version of the US’s Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (ESTA). The introduction of those new processes – which could cause very serious hold-ups at every port of first entry into the EU – has been repeatedly delayed and is now scheduled for November.   

Reduced passenger volumes at peak times may be the only short-run answer

The Dover problem is another variation of the phenomenon seen last year at the Eurostar terminals. Capacity at St Pancras could not cope with as many passengers as it had when constructed based on pre-Brexit controls. The result has been a reduction in capacity, with fewer trains between the UK and Paris or Brussels every day. That now seems to be on the cards at Dover. Traffic will divert to other routes and to other means. Or people will have to take up John Redwood’s advice of holidaying in the UK.

Other options, such as ensuring all desks are open when there is likely to be heavy traffic, cramming in more staff where possible, and perhaps even paying France to increase staffing at crunch points, should all be explored. But there are few quick and easy fixes.

Borders will never be as unobtrusive as they were with freedom of movement

Over time, more electronic processing at EU borders and removing the need for “wet stamping” could cut processing time per person and reduce the risk of backlogs. Easing some of the restrictions on UK travellers going into the EU by a more comprehensive mobility agreement – of the sort reportedly offered to the UK by the EU in the last set of negotiations – could potentially reduce the need for some border checks, for example over business visits.  

But the critical factor in the EU allowing easy processing before Brexit was freedom of movement between the UK and other member states. Politicians of both main parties interpreted the Brexit vote as meaning the need to end that, whatever trading relationship they wanted to see emerge from the negotiations.  

The UK regained the right to control its borders through Brexit, and ministers celebrate that outcome. But the EU also regained that same right, and that border now goes down the middle of the English channel. Ministers need to own the consequences.