Dover holdups blamed on signature demands of French customs
Demands by French customs officials over the type of signature they will accept on post-Brexit paperwork has been blamed by UK business leaders for causing long queues of lorries on approach roads to Dover.
Two year after Boris Johnson smiled for the cameras, fountain pen in hand over the EU withdrawal agreement, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said a minor disagreement over signatures on customs paperwork had arisen between Britain and France.
William Bain, the head of trade policy at the BCC, said the trade body had heard from UK exporters that French customs officials were demanding a wet signature on border documents for shipments of animals and plant products from the UK.
However, he said much of the documentation is produced digitally, creating unexpected holdups on deliveries from Dover to Calais.
“One of the issues at Dover currently appears to be linked to the export of food products across the Channel,” Bain said. “Like many of the problems this looks to be down to a differing interpretation of how the trade arrangements work after leaving the EU.
“It is the latest in a string of issues with the trade deal that speaks to the wider problems of interpretation, inconsistent application and glaring gaps in its coverage.”
The dispute over wet signatures is reminiscent of delays in the 1980s when France ordered that all foreign-made video recorders entering the country be cleared by a nine-person customs depot in Poitiers, hundreds of miles from northern ports where goods shipped from Japan docked.
In the two years since Brexit, UK exports to the EU have fallen sharply. Although economists say there are difficulties disentangling the impact from the fallout of Covid-19, which has caused severe disruption to global
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