“The tunnel today represents 25% of commercial exchanges between Great Britain and all European countries”, said Tuesday May 7 Yann Leriche, the general director of Getlink (formerly Eurotunnel) the concessionaire and operator of the Channel Tunnel. It is the symbol of the Entente Cordiale, the longest underwater tunnel in the world, the Channel Tunnel was inaugurated thirty years ago, on May 6, 1994, by the Queen of England and President François Mitterrand. If Yann Leriche recognizes that the beginnings were not easy financially, “if we take a step back, 30 years later, what a tremendous success!”he rejoices, specifying that “nearly half a billion people have crossed the Channel thanks to the tunnel”.
But Brexit has happened and a new system for recording data upon entry into the European Union (Entry Exit system or EES) must come into force at the end of 2024. It will make it possible to electronically control the entries and exits of nationals of non-EU member countries crossing the external borders of the Schengen area, for a short stay. Yann Leriche assures him, they have invested “80 million euros“and they are”loans” so that “these new formalities continue to be carried out on our terminals in good conditions”.
franceinfo: You are leaving the general meeting of shareholders which was held Tuesday morning in Paris. There are small shareholders from the very beginning who believed in technological prowess at the time. What did you tell them? That they did well to stay at a time when you were drowning in debt, and that you resisted everything, including Covid and Brexit?
Yann Leriche : Yes, the tunnel is a long 30-year adventure which, as you pointed out, had a slightly difficult start financially, but if we take a step back 30 years later, what a tremendous success! The tunnel today accounts for 25% of commercial exchanges between Great Britain and all European countries. Nearly half a billion people have crossed thanks to the tunnel. And so he perfectly fulfilled his mission of bringing Britain together on one side and Europe on the other.
Brexit notably involves the end of freedom of movement, with two new formalities, the new system for recording data upon entry into the European Union comes into force next fall. Are you prepared for it?
We are totally ready. The United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, these new EES systems, each time, for us, these are new formalities. And we decided not only to adapt to these formalities, but to take advantage of them to strengthen our competitiveness by doing better than most of our competitors.
The British represent 70% of passenger traffic.
Yes that’s it. So these new EES (Entry Exit System) formalities are a new system which will see new controls carried out for third country nationals. Third countries are countries which are not countries in the Schengen zone. The United Kingdom is one of the countries which is not in the Schengen zone, which has never been there in fact.
“British nationals, when they cross the border at the end of the year, will have to do facial biometrics and will also have to give their fingerprints.”
And you don’t want a waiting list, you don’t want people to wait a long time, since that’s your competitive advantage in particular.
Yes, the great strength of the tunnel is that it goes quickly, it works well and it will continue to work well. We have invested a lot, 80 million euros, to be ready for these new formalities which will continue to be carried out on our terminals under good conditions. We have also increased the size of our various infrastructures to have a throughput that will be the same as what we have today.
And so you hope it won’t have an impact…
We do more than hope. We made complete digital twins of our two terminals to model all of this, for the authorities, to ensure that it works well. If we go back a little bit, we were told with Brexit that there would be hours and hours of queues to get to Paris and London, that didn’t happen. In the same way, that won’t happen because thanks to digital, thanks to the daily work of our teams, thanks to the work with the French and British authorities, we have prepared all of that. And so this date of entry into force of the EES, today, does not worry us at all. On the contrary, we see it as a complementary advantage by doing better than other operators.
Brexit did not result in waiting lists, but it did result in a drop in traffic. This is still far from its pre-Covid levels: less 30% for trucks compared to 2019, less 16% for cars. How do you explain it?
It is true that trade has not returned to pre-Brexit levels. There are many factors that explain this. There is indeed Brexit, Covid intervened, the rise in energy prices, inflation. So we are faced with a series of factors which mean that today, indeed, we are not quite back to what we were before, but the volumes are growing and it is starting to pick up again. , so we are extremely confident. We still have a lot of British people, for example, who have their second home in France, around 150,000, and they continue to cross, resume travel.
You also have competition from ferries crossing the Channel.
We have competition from ferries, we have always had it in fact.
“In these markets, we are the leader, whether in freight or passengers. In passengers, for example, we have a 58% market share.”
Yann Lericheon franceinfo
And if we have not quite returned to pre-Covid volumes, in particular because travel habits have changed, we have travelers who travel for longer and who buy more premium products from us. Which means that today we have an extremely efficient company, which has a turnover that is higher than what it was before. Because travel is not just a number of crossings, it is also the ability to stop.
You denounced, in particular, social dumping on the part of certain ferry companies which practiced wages below the minimum wage.
Yes, that is one of our great battles today. We have three ferry competitors facing us, on the Strait of Pas-de-Calais. Two of them practiced what we call social dumping. These two operators have freed themselves from paying their employees the French and British wage and social security minimums. And so obviously, they enter into competition which is not based on the quality of service, not on innovation, but only on the payment of their employees, with the lowest possible conditions.
He was denounced. We’re not the only ones. All those who pay their employees under conditions respecting French and British law have acted, we and others. And laws have been passed in France and Great Britain to stop it. Because indeed, it is a hole in the argument. The French decrees were passed last month and come into force from 1er July this year.
Are you exploiting the tunnel to its maximum capacity today? ?
The tunnel still has a lot of potential. That’s what’s very interesting. This means that there is strong demand, for example for new high-speed destinations.
Today, it’s Paris, London, Amsterdam.
There you go, that exists. There is a demand to do more. And so for the demand to be expressed, we offer two things. First, we increased the tunnel capacity. Concretely, we can run more trains. We were limited to 600 per day not long ago. We are at 400 today and we can go up to 1,000, so we have given the tunnel capacity reserve. And what we did to make these new high-speed destinations possible, we worked in three different areas. We worked to simplify all the rules for access to the tunnel because we realized that this was why new services were not launching. We worked with our peers, the managers of other infrastructures upstream and downstream of the tunnel and we worked with the train manufacturers so that the new generations of trains, TGVs in particular, are suitable for going into the tunnel. And all this has led to new entrants appearing because these simplified rules make it very easy today to launch new services.
What next destination do you hope for and when?
So we expect it concretely, since new entrants and Eurostar themselves declare that they wanted to launch new services.
“Within five to ten years, we expect that the number of direct destinations between London and European capitals will actually be doubled.”
Yann Lericheon franceinfo
And concretely, among these capitals, cities in Germany and Switzerland: Cologne, Frankfurt, Geneva and Zurich in particular.