Travel into France from the UK resumed on Wednesday morning after Paris reopened its borders with Britain for people who test negative for Covid-19, but trucks remained stacked up in Dover as drivers complained of a lack of clarity over when they would be able to get across the Channel.
France announced the reopening late on Tuesday, ending a 48-hour closure imposed in an attempt to stop a new strain of coronavirus now dominant in parts of southern England from spreading through Europe.
But the UK government operation to test lorry drivers before departure has not yet begun, said the Road Haulage Association, meaning the border was still essentially closed to lorries and other freight vehicles on Wednesday morning.
Rod McKenzie, director of policy at the RHA, said that the situation on the ground in Kent was “chaos”, arguing that it was not clear how the flow of vehicles at the border would work or how drivers would take tests and receive their results.
“We have very, very angry truckers in Dover”, and the on the ground information had been “extremely poor”, he told the BBC.
The sudden closure of French frontiers to all travellers from the UK had severely disrupted the crucial freight routes between the UK and Europe across the Channel by ferry and the Channel Tunnel. The UK government has said there is a backlog of about 4,000 trucks in Kent waiting to cross into France, but the RHA said on Tuesday evening there were between 8,000 and 10,000.
Ferries began arriving in France from Dover in the early hours of the morning, but carried only a few cars, vans and truck trailers without drivers. “The first lorries to arrive will not be till early afternoon,” said Jean-Marc Puissesseau, who heads Calais and Boulogne ports. Calais port said at 11am local time that it had received 20 cars, 30 vans and no lorries.
While about 150 cars crossed overnight, Eurotunnel said that no freight had crossed the Channel on its services by 9.30am in the UK. Eurostar train services between the UK and France resumed, while some flights between UK airports and France were scheduled to leave on Wednesday morning.
At the Port of Dover, drivers whose lorries were parked at the front of the queue for the next ferry said they had not yet been tested. They said they had received little information on when they might be allowed to board, and that nothing had moved since 6am.
The roads leading to the ports were gridlocked, with drivers periodically sounding their horns in frustration.
“No one knows anything, not the police, not the port people, no one,” said one driver, who did not wish to give his name.
Police said there had been “scuffles, but nothing major” this morning as a dozen or so drivers demanded clarity on when traffic might start moving.
The British army is being deployed to test truck drivers in a vast logistical operation starting on Wednesday morning, but it was not clear when the first drivers to be tested would reach France. Ministers admit the backlog of thousands of vehicles will take several days to clear.
The Department for Transport has told the haulage industry it expects to be able to test 300 drivers per hour, using the same tests used in the NHS Test and Trace programme. About 30,000 tests are already in place in Kent, with 100,000 expected to be delivered over the coming days.
The main testing site is at Manston Airport, a disused airfield which is the primary holding area for lorries held up by the disruption. The site near Ramsgate is already full, and drivers parked up on the M20 will also be able to get tested.
Drivers who are able to source their own tests will be allowed to cross if they carry proof, but it was unclear how they would be able to leapfrog the queue of trucks nearer the port.
Only truck drivers, French and EU citizens or residents with an essential reason to travel who can show a negative Covid-19 test result less than 72 hours old will be allowed into France until at least January 6.
France said it would not insist on so-called PCR tests, which require laboratory analysis and typically take at least a day to return results, but would demand that tests be sensitive to the new variant.
The British army will test lorry drivers across Kent using lateral flow tests, and any driver who tests positive will be offered a PCR test and sent to a secure hotel to isolate if an infection is confirmed.
Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, French transport minister, said any lorry drivers confirmed to have Covid-19 would be isolated for 10 days in the UK in accommodation organised by the British government before being allowed to come to France.
Elizabeth de Jong, policy director at business group Logistics UK, said: “It is now vital that Covid-19 testing procedures be stood up fast to ensure drivers can be processed and get home for Christmas safely.”