January 3 that foreign media said that Britain, which had left the “European club” for nearly half a century, began a new post-Brexit life in 2021.
Although there is no immediate trouble, there are still many unknowns.
British Prime Minister Johnson promised that this year would be a “year of change and hope”.
It will take some time to make a preliminary assessment of the impact of Britain’s departure from the single market on transportation.
Because of the New Year’s holidays and the epidemic, calm dominates everything this Friday.
“It’s not more complicated than before Brexit,” said Clemance, a passenger with children who dropped off from London Station in the afternoon on the first Eurostar train from Paris.
Mathilde, a 35-year-old German who moved to London for seven years, also thought that the traffic was smooth. “What changes is that you have to know what you should do.” She spent an hour before departure to check Brexit and epidemic prevention regulations, and avoided going through 10 days of quarantine after returning to London by presenting a negative certificate of the virus.
On Friday, traffic at London’s Dover port was normal and there was no congestion, the report said.
Nearly 200 trucks crossed the English Channel at midnight, and despite the tax procedures, “no trouble”.
Alexandru, a 29-year-old truck driver, arrived in Dover in the early morning in a truck carrying 23 tons of Moroccan tomatoes.
He said, “Everything is normal. Sure, how many people have you seen working on New Year’s Day?”
According to the report, the recovery of economic activity next week raises concerns that traffic flow will slow down due to the emergence of new customs clearance procedures and possible disturbances around the port.
As a result, the Welsh Road Information Center tweeted that the important port of Hollyhead, a Welsh port near Ireland, may “have traffic slowing in the coming weeks”.
According to the website of Spain’s Le Monde on January 1, Britain has spent its first day of Brexit relatively normally under the severe epidemic.
There were no long queues of worried trucks at the entrance of the Channel Tunnel and Dover Harbor.
With a three-month “forgive period”, products such as food entering Northern Ireland will temporarily pass through this “internal” customs without declaration and inspection.
This provides time for enterprises supplying from the United Kingdom to Northern Ireland to adapt to the new situation.
The report said that the British government marked 10 “hot spots” that may have problems after the end of the Brexit transition period and launched contingency plans to guarantee emergency food and medicine transportation during the blockade of ports.
Of the 50,000 additional customs staff promised by the British government, it is not certain how many people were on duty on January 1.
Transportation practitioners said they had not received enough information and did not have time to test the new customs clearance procedures, and almost everything had to be “on the spot”.
Meanwhile, the British (and Europeans living in the UK) are beginning to realize how Brexit will affect their lives in 2021, from “vegetable baskets” to travel to the continent to mailing packages to Northern Ireland.
The report pointed out that the potential threat of a “no-deal Brexit” led to a 3% to 5% increase in food prices.
The Johnson administration’s trade deal on Christmas Eve eased pressure on some supermarkets and quelled “panic shopping” during the “lockdown” of the English Channel.
According to the report, the coronavirus epidemic has completely changed the travel habits of Britons, and Brexit may deepen this change.
From now on, British people need to apply for visas if they want to stay in the EU for more than 90 days.
They must also guarantee their passports are valid for more than six months and queue up with non-EU citizens to enter the country.
