UK, France Trade Blame over Dover Traffic Chaos

For a second day on Saturday, thousands of tourists trying to get to the European mainland encountered severe traffic bottlenecks outside the UK port of Dover.

The delays occur as border checks, which were reinstated after Britain left the European Union last year and ended free movement of people and commodities between the UK and the continent of Europe, are conducted by customs authorities.

Before boarding ships to northern France, travellers must go through border checks with both the UK and France in Dover.

Despite the fact that there have been significant truck lines at the port ever since Brexit, the issue has been made worse by the sheer volume of people looking to travel overseas for the first summer in three years without fear of a pandemic. Some people were reported to have waited six hours or longer to catch their ferries.

The French government was accused of not providing enough workers to man the customs checks by the British foreign minister, Liz Truss. "The paucity of resources at the border is to blame for this predicament."

"I'm being quite explicit with the French authorities about the necessity for them to solve this," in Kent, southeast England, she told journalists.

Doug Bannister, the chief executive of the Port of Dover, initially made the same assertion but later acknowledged that there were "higher transaction delays" as a result of the additional border restrictions following Brexit.

Pierre-Henri Dumont, a French legislator whose district includes the port city of Calais on the French Channel, likewise advanced the argument. He claimed on BBC television that the gridlock was "an aftereffect of Brexit."