The company that owns the Channel Tunnel could take the European Commission to court after a last-minute delay to a new Brexit border system. Getlink, the European company based in Paris, made the threat during a UK parliamentary committee.
John Keefe, the company’s British chief corporate officer, told the House of Lords committee that the EU had thwarted the new Entry-Exit System (EES) at the last minute. This has left the firm shouldering extra costs and unable to spend £70 million of planned investment.
After years of delay, the EES was part of a new Brexit border regime and was due to launch on November 10. However, it was postponed again with just weeks to go, despite Getlink building an array of new electronic kiosks to accommodate the scheme.
The company have also hired several new staff to manage the kiosks.
Mr Keefe told the parliamentary committee: “We were ready, we have all of our technology in place, all of our infrastructure in place, we had our processes worked though, and we’ve recruited most of the staff that we’ll need on 10 November. We won’t be able to put that investment to use.
“We’ll be sitting with £70 million spent to develop the technology, to build the infrastructure, to do the modeling using AI, to install all the kiosks that we had specially built to operate in the vehicle environment.
“All of that will have to be put into hibernation. That’s a cost that we’ll have to carry because of this delay.”
When asked about the possibility that Getlink could sue the EU to recover the costs, Mr Keefe added, “On the question of cost recovery: yes, of course, we’re considering that.”
He continued: “We have followed the project to the letter, we have been ready to go live and we’ve put €80 million worth of investment into making sure that it would not only be ready but it would also be efficient, so we would continue with the levels of traffic flow that we’ve managed today.
“To see that cost just sitting there is not an acceptable solution for a publicly quoted company.”
The Channel Tunnel is a 50km undersea railway tunnel that connects Folkestone, England, with Coquelles, France, beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. It is the only fixed link between Britain and the European mainland.
Gareth Williams, general secretary of the Eurostar told the same committee that the rail operator is also “sitting there with a high investment in infrastructure that is idle”.
A European Commission spokesperson told Politico that the Commission “does not comment on comments”.
They added that it had “not received all required declarations of readiness, which is a legal requirement to be able to start the operation of the system”.