The British Minister of Transport said that the ban imposed by France for a period of 48 hours on shipping carriers from Britain was “surprising”, amid expectations Anarchy in the British ports.

although Grant Shaps He said the unrest was not a “specific problem” regarding shortage of food and medicine. In the short term, the government’s goal was to “solve this problem as soon as possible.”

“Once the French said, perhaps a little surprisingly, that they were going to stop the tankers and not just the passengers, we were in contact with a group known as the Kent Resilience Forum,” Shaps told Sky News on Monday morning.

“They are well used to planning exactly that kind of circumstance.”

He added that discussions are continuing between the British and French governments, and that Manston Airport in Kent will open on Monday as a truck stop.

Up to 4,000 trucks will be accommodated at the site, however due to the expected disruption level of management Transportation Transport companies are advised to avoid traveling to Kent Ports until further notice.

The government recently acquired Manston Airport as a backup plan to meet the worst possible scenario for Brexit, and it is now a priority because construction of the Lorry Park near Dover in Ashford is not yet complete.


The statements came after France’s announcement as well Travel ban on passengers Coming from the United Kingdom, along with countries including Denmark, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, Turkey and Canada, due to concerns about the spread of a new rapidly spreading strain of Covid-19.

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An emergency meeting of senior officials from EU member states will coordinate the bloc’s response on Monday morning, with one option being to ban travelers from the UK until January 6. Experts will consider the option of testing for carriers to protect supply chains between the UK and the continent.

During a video call from Europe The advisers of the 27 heads of state and government released the details of their travel ban on Sunday evening. Sources in Brussels did not rule out a meeting of European Union leaders in the coming days, as Britain’s exit from the European Union without an agreement is also likely to loom.

A spokesperson for No. 10 said Prime Minister Boris Johnson would chair a Cobra meeting on Monday to address the “ongoing flow of freight to and from the UK”.

French Minister for Europe, Clement Boone, said that Paris’s decision on Sunday night to suspend transport links from the United Kingdom for a period of 48 hours was taken as an “emergency and precaution”.

France He said, “This weekend, the UK authorities themselves, including Boris Johnson, received information that justified additional restrictions in the UK.”

We have discussed with our European partners – President Macron spoke to Chancellor Merkel in particular – and we decided that in order to collect as much information as possible, we had to take this emergency measure.

It is a difficult procedure because this is about protecting public health. We have chosen, like many European countries, such as Belgium for example, which also has very large traffic flows from the United Kingdom, to suspend all transport links from Britain for 48 hours. “

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He added that the French government would look to find solutions for its citizens in the United Kingdom who “legitimately want to go home for the holidays” and advised them to get a PCR test because a negative result would be necessary for them to return.

Shaps said France’s ban on shipping from the UK would also be “an inconvenience for them”, so there were “a lot of incentives” to resolve the situation.

He added that the country had gone “farther than other countries that absolutely rightly wanted to be precautionary about their approach,” but the truth is that the new coronavirus “may be somewhere else.”


He also said that the UK’s start-up vaccination program would not be affected by the French ban on shipping from the UK, saying most of the supplies did not come by tankers but via containers.

“To put this into context, there are about 6000 vehicles we expect, a little less in Dover today, I would say 4,000 cars would have passed through Dover, just under 2,000 vehicles on the Eurotunnel,” he said.

“But there are likely to be approximately 32,000 units that would have been the daily total, so the vast majority including nearly all of the vaccine actually comes through a container.”