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France places restrictions on UK visitors
France has become the latest country to place restrictions on UK travellers due to growing fears over the Indian variant of Covid-19. Clément Beaune, the French Europe minister, announced that from Monday 31st May, travellers arriving from the UK who are not either French nationals or residents will have to demonstrate an essential reason for their journey. Leisure travel and visiting a second home are not currently considered essential.
The government’s official spokesman, Gabriel Attal, had earlier said that there was “a new situation with the progression of the so-called Indian variant in the UK”, adding that Germany had already imposed strict controls on visitors from Britain and that France was taking “similar measures”.
From June, anyone arriving from the UK with a valid reason must provide a negative PCR test taken no more than 48 hours prior to travel and then self-isolate for 7 days on arrival at a pre-declared address. While there is no obligation to go into a hotel, self-isolation will be closely supervised by police and anyone who is not at their registered quarantine location will face a fine starting at €1,000.
There has been anger in the tourist industry at the move, but the decision to exercise caution has been welcomed by most experts, especially given the impact the UK variant had on the situation on this side of the Channel earlier this year. The numbers were very low in France, but when the significantly more transmissible UK variant took hold in France, numbers shot up and quickly led to the most recent lockdown.
“If there’s one thing we’ve learned today, it’s that the lessons of the past have not been applied to the present,” a spokesperson for Brittany Ferries said. “The unwelcome move by France to tighten travel restrictions is a direct consequence of the failure of the UK to put India on the red list immediately following the emergence of the terrible and urgent health crisis unfolding in India.”
“There are also indications that this variant spreads a bit more easily than the previous ones. It’s unclear exactly how much, but it looks like it’s a bit more transmissible. So, altogether it seems a bit worse so I can understand why the French authorities want to limit importation of it in order to progress with the vaccination programme,” said Dr Marc Baguelin, an infectious diseases specialist at Impe-
credit: Benoit Tessier
rial College London. “Things may change once we know more about the variant and once France increases its vaccination coverage sufficiently to take that into account. If cases remain very low in the UK then they would probably revise their position as well. There is an economic element to consider as well – there’s a fine balance between not wanting a resurgence of a bad variant and at the same time it’s not in [France's] interest to block travellers coming indefinitely. It’s really a race between vaccinating and opening up the economy.”
There has so far been no indication of when the restrictions on UK travellers may be lifted, or what conditions would need to be met. ■
Eurostar secures future with significant investment
Eurostar, the operator which runs passenger trains through the Channel Tunnel, appears to have avoided financial ruin after securing a €290 million investment. The company, which had been on the verge of bankruptcy, said the funds provided by shareholders and banks would “secure Eurostar’s future”.
Eurostar has continued to run a skeleton service between France, London and Belgium during the pandemic, but with severe restrictions on international travel, revenues have plummeted. The train company typically transports 11 million passengers a year, but this dropped by 95% post-pandemic resulting in an annual decrease in revenue from €1.1 billion to just €220 million in 2020.
The London-based company has struggled to access government financial aid due to its ownership structure, with both the British and French governments reluctant to assume sole responsibility for bailing it out. The operator was launched as a joint venture between the French and British governments, but whilst the French state operator SNCF today owns 55% of the company, the British part was sold off to private investors, the largest of which is a Canadian institutional fund manager which has a 30% stake. This has made state-backed aid almost impossible to secure in the UK – the company is British registered, but “foreign-owned”. At the same time the French government was reluctant to give help to a UK company when Brexit meant that guarantees available under the European Union were no longer valid.
According to the company, the recent injection of capital will help it meet its financial commitments in the “short and medium-term” and there are plans to start running more trains between Paris and London over the summer. The company also said that it will use part of the refinancing package to restart the proposed merger with the Thalys rail network, called Green Speed 3. This would allow single ticket bookings between Eurostar and Thalys trains, which run much further afield between France, Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany. ■
Trump supporters want waxwork head
Acampaign is under way by supporters of Donald Trump to buy his waxwork head from a Parisian museum. When the Grévin Wax Museum re-opened to the public in May, visitors were greeted by a grinning President Biden and further down the hall could be found a serenely smiling Barrack Obama, with Trump conspicuous by his absence.
As is customary for former American presidents, the wax statue had been removed from display in January when Trump's term in office came to an end and was placed in storage. Since opening in 1882, the museum has featured every US president since James Garfield, but when their term ends, their statue is usually taken down, with the heads and bodies kept in separate crates in the building's cellars. “We have kept Obama, as a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize; the others are in storage,” a spokesperson for the museum said.
The curator of the Musée Grévin, Yves Delhommeau, came to the attention of Trump supporters after a series of tongue-in-cheek comments about the waxwork. After initially joking that the statue had “taken a lot of hair” to create, a subsequent suggestion that the museum may re-use the statue as part of a Hallowe'en display drew anger from pro-Trump followers on Twitter. This led to numerous unsolicited emails and telephone calls from people wanting to buy the statue. “Some even managed to find the telephone number of my home, including one Englishman who was very determined!” the curator said. “The museum does not sell its statues. We do not play politics.”
Among the museum's 250 or so celebrities and historical figures, political leaders are relatively rare. French President Emmanuel Macron is present, as are German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping, but British Prime Minister Boris Johnson does not feature. Former French President François Hollande is no longer on display, but his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy is, but only because he appears alongside his model and singer wife Carla Bruni. ■
Fosse-Septique23.com
A cleaner future today Steve. JOHNS. SARL
