the tragedy of the European truck drivers trapped in Great Britain

Despite the Franco-British agreement and Brexit, thousands of European truckers will spend their Christmas in your cabin, en route to the port of Dover, or at a desolate disused British airport. The decision of French President Emmanuel Macron to allow their entry into France, after having unexpectedly closed the border because of Covid, if they do a rapid test to detect whether they are negative or positive is extremely slow, painful.

British testers are not used to it and abandoned the process on Wednesday at 8 p.m. to restart it slowly on Thursday.

Only 100 trucks they managed to be tested and the first left on the first ferry.

Others must cross the Channel via the Eurotunel, by train, in a 38-minute journey before arriving in France and leaving the road to their countries.

At least 10,000 French test kits were brought in Thursday morning by 26 French firefighters, which began to be applied immediately to drivers. But even with these efforts it will not be possible test everyone so they can spend Christmas Eve as a family. The pilots are furious, anguished and there are new clashes with the police. No UK government authority is present.

10,000 French tests

The prefect of northern France announced that firefighters and associations had left at 4 a.m. to facilitate the operation in the British port. The French border police are also participating in the operation, in an area where there is a common border between Great Britain and France, thanks to the Touquets agreements.

The Ambassador of France in London, Catherine Colona announced this collaboration and the sending of antigen tests, that Great Britain insufficient.

Anguish, anger and frustration were the climate again in Dover on Christmas Eve. A concert of deafening horns is the protest of these thousands of drivers from across the EU and Turkey, victims of a mutant virus that spreads dangerously with Covid 19 and of the political use of the crisis by France, by closing the border for freight unexpectedly.

Their conditions of survival horrendas son on this Christmas Eve. They have no toilets, no showers to bathe in and no place to eat hot food other than burgers and fries on the Sunday menu. They live inside the truck, they sleep there, they eat but they cannot be disinfected.

The port of Dover, where ferries arrive and close to the Eurostar which takes trucks under the Channel Tunnel, is a complete traffic jam. French firefighters are going truck by truck to do the quick tests to unlock this monumental chaos. But to think that he will be released before midnight is unreal.

“I am resigned to spending Christmas here. My wife and my wife are waiting for me in Seville, ”said Sergio, a Spanish truck driver.

Amid the chaos, the German ambassador in London was looking for German truckers to help them. Not a single British authority, not the Transport Minister, not even Prime Minister Boris Johnson has come forward show your solidarity.

“Yesterday we saw 71 cars and 32 heavy trucks arriving. It was my big surprise at the end of the day. The traffic was not rehabilitated by the British measures concerning the tests ”, declared Jean Marc Puissesseau, the CEO of the port operations on the French side. “After midnight only 44 trucks arrived and no cars and this morning only five trucks, ”he said on Friday.

Each ferry can bring 120 trucks but they arrive in these hours with less than 50.

Christmas in the cabin

The parsimony of the tests contrasts with the fury of the stranded truckers, many with their empty trucks or their rotten merchandise, who feel the victims of a crisis which it is not theirs.

The plan is that seven ferries can make five daily rotations between Calais and Dover, but this will not improve fluidity throughout the day.

For the drivers, the problem is not only the lack of comfort, locked in their cabins, with rain and cold and without hygiene. The place where they are parked It’s a desert without facilities, which is completely confined to its environment thanks to Covid and its new variant.

The functional toilets are one kilometer from the traffic jam. The rest were broken. Its drama is that no one informs them. They are in an information deadlock and cannot give a single piece of information to the companies that hire them or to their families.

“It’s very monotonous. It is raining, there is wind and cold. We are locked in the cabin. We watch TV on hold. But they stopped the tests without telling us and we were waiting for them last night until 1am to take the test and leave. They did not take the test. I am resigned to spending Christmas here, ”explains Alain Bourgeois, a French pilot.

According to Alain, no tests have been carried out in the middle of the major traffic jam, which will unblock the route for the trucks with drivers with negative results to move forward. If they don’t sort out the logistics, the ferries come and go half empty. Drivers who tested positive were offered to stay in a hotel.

Brexit refugees

British transport unionist Sandy Penne believes that “mathematically and technically, it is impossible to evacuate all trucks, whether by ferry or Eurotunel. The authorities know it is impossible ”.

Trucks are growing all over Dover and its streets. Dover is located Level 4, the most extreme alert to the new variant of Covid. Some neighbors dare to open the doors to drivers.

They invite them to take a shower, offer a hot meal and brush their teeth. A gesture of solidarity amid the severity of the containment of the pandemic to drivers, the new Brexit refugees.

Paris, correspondent

ap