London mayor Sadiq Khan has expressed concerns that Eurostar passengers travelling from the United Kingdom to the European Union could be subject to chaos once the EU Entry/Exit System scheduled for October becomes effective.
The Entry/Exit System (EES) scheme that will be established by the EU will register entry and exit data of non-EU nationals crossing the external borders of the EU countries in a bid to strengthen and better protect the EU’s external borders.
As it stands, these new post-Brexit checks will cause chaos at St Pancras (the London station serving Eurostar passengers), with cuts to services and potentially huge queues facing passengers at peak times. This is directly a result of Brexit, and it’s not an issue ministers can now wash their hands of.
Since the UK officially left the EU in 2020, citizens from both territories are subject to different rules when planning to travel to each other’s territories.
Recently, HS1, the owner and operator of the line and stations between London and the Channel Tunnel, said that Eurostar may limit the number of passengers travelling from St Pancras every day following plans for the implementation of the Entry/Exit System (EES) implementation.
The same stressed that controls at the London rail station are severely inadequate and would lead to long delays and potential capping of services and passenger numbers.
The implementation of the EES was postponed several times after the infrastructure was not ready. However, the implementation of this system is expected to happen in October 2024.
The French government said that only 24 EES kiosks had been allocated, even though calculations indicate that about 50 would be required during busy periods.
We are told that the proposed kiosks are ‘optional’ as the process can be delivered at the border, but without about 49 additional kiosks located before the current international zone [at St Pancras], there would be unacceptable passenger delays of many hours and potential capping of services.
In addition, it predicted that Eurostar would be unable to process all passengers with only 24 kiosks.
Eurostar currently operates nearly 14 trains from St Pancras to Paris daily, and each train can carry up to 900 passengers.
Furthermore, HS1 noted that implementing the Entry/Exit System at the Grande-listed St Pancras building would be challenging due to space limitations. Besides, HS1 also mentioned that the queuing process would be complicated due to insufficient space.
