‘Brits are suffering but for us it’s boom time’: how Brexit boosted French and Irish ports
theguardian.comRain or shine, Colm Lambert likes to sit on a bench overlooking Rosslare port on the south-eastern tip of Ireland and watch the new freight ships and passenger ferries sailing in from the Irish Sea.
“They’re coming in from France, Spain, Belgium, Holland – it’s great to see,” he said. “Brexit has made an awful difference to here. Boris Johnson did Rosslare a favour.”
Lambert, 81, a retired Irish customs officer, may draw the line at erecting a statue to Britain’s former prime minister, but he appreciates Brexit’s transformative impact on the once-stagnant port where he used to work. “It’s created jobs.”
A little over 340 nautical miles away in Cherbourg, Normandy, Yannick Millet, the port’s managing director, is equally enthusiastic. “The Brits may be suffering from Brexit,” he said. “But for us, it’s boom time. Traffic with Ireland is through the roof.”
For decades, the cheapest and fastest way to move goods between Ireland and the continent was the so-called “land bridge” via Britain and the Dover-Calais crossing. Brexit’s double whammy of customs checks and delays has hugely increased both costs and uncertainty, prompting businesses to bypass the UK.
The consequences for the two ports have been spectacular. Given a chance by Brexit to persuade traders that the longer sea crossing between Ireland and mainland Europe was now viable, Cherbourg and Rosslare have seized it with both hands.
Before the UK left the EU, Rosslare Europort was an underused facility with just six sailings a week to the continent, all into Cherbourg. Now it has 30-plus, to Cherbourg, Le Havre, Bilbao, Dunkirk and Zeebrugge – a fivefold increase that has led to record overall freight traffic.
“Brexit gave us an opportunity,” said Glenn Carr, the port’s
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