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Mounting losses for Channel Tunnel operators as travel bans and Brexit hit business

Getlink, the operator of the Channel Tunnel link between France and Britain, reported on Thursday deepening losses in the first half of the year as Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic hit traffic flows hard.

Mounting losses for Channel Tunnel operators as travel bans and Brexit hit business
Photo: Christophe Petit Tesson/AFP

Revenues came in at €326 million in the first six months of this year, a drop of 12 percent from the same period last year when Covid-19 first hit. That is a 38-percent drop from the pre-pandemic level in 2019.

Net losses swelled to €123 million, compared to €88 million in the first six months of last year.

That also surpassed the €113-million loss it suffered in 2020 as a whole.

The company said the results reflected “the effects of the pandemic as well as by the new administrative formalities for Brexit.”

It said traffic by high-speed Eurostar train service was “severely disrupted as a result of government travel restrictions” as were other passenger services through the tunnel.

Eurostar services suffered a 96 percent drop in traffic from the 2019 pre-pandemic level to just over 200,000 passengers.

Eurostar had been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, but secured a €290 million bailout in May.

The decline in car traffic was 78 percent and coach traffic 87 percent.

Meanwhile, the company said lorry traffic, which was “impacted over the first three months of the year due to stockpiling before the end of the (Brexit) transition period at the end of December and the adaptation to new administrative formalities, picked up in the second quarter.”

Lorry traffic dipped by just 3 percent from the level in the first half of 2020, with a 21 percent drop in the first quarter followed by a 23 percent gain. It was still down 20 percent from the pre-pandemic level in the first half of 2019, however.

The company said it was impossible to provide any performance forecasts “as long as the governments fail to take a stable long-term position on international travel restrictions”.

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TRAVEL NEWS

Eurostar says may scrap links to Amsterdam from 2025

Eurostar's chief has threatened to scrap the rail route to the Netherlands from 2025 because of doubts over when Amsterdam's international terminal will reopen.

Eurostar says may scrap links to Amsterdam from 2025

“Could the Netherlands be temporarily cut off from one of the most essential rail links in Europe?” Gwendoline Cazenave asked in an editorial for Dutch business daily Het Financieele Dagblad on Wednesday.

The Dutch network was suffering “reliability problems, capacity restrictions and delays that are particularly inconvenient for passengers”, she argued.

The company could cut both its Amsterdam-Rotterdam-London and Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Paris routes in 2025, Cazanave’s editorial said.

“In the absence of clarity from the Dutch rail network (…), Eurostar will be forced to suspend connections between Amsterdam-Rotterdam and London and Paris during 2025”, warns Gwendoline Cazenave.

With Amsterdam’s main station undergoing extensive work since June the direct London route has temporarily closed.

Cazenave said that on various sections of track Eurostar trains had been forced to halve their speed to 80 kph since November.

Since the direct route to London was halted for a scheduled six months through to year’s end, passengers have had to disembark in Brussels for passport control before completing their journey.

The Amsterdam upgrade was meant to take six months, but Eurostar has deplored what it says is the lack of guarantees on a resumption date.

“Eurostar is fully prepared to reopen direct connections at the beginning of 2025, as planned,” said Cazenave.

But other work has also been announced from early 2025 in the station, which would limit the availability of platforms, she added. The London connection requires the station to also provide border control services, as since Brexit the lines crosses an EU external border. 

In 2023, Eurostar said it had carried a total 4.2 million passengers between the Netherlands and France, Britain and Belgium.

French national railway operator SNCF Voyageurs holds a majority stake in Eurostar.

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