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Duty free and frequent ferries: French port of Calais unveils €863 million revamp

The city of Calais in northern France inaugurated its extended port on Thursday after six years of construction work. Authorities hope to attract British tourists with more frequent ferries and tax-free sales.

Published: 10 September 2021 11:26 CEST
Duty free and frequent ferries: French port of Calais unveils €863 million revamp
The new port of Calais on September 9th, 2021, the day of its inauguration after five years of work. Photo: DENIS CHARLET / AFP.

Coming in at €863 million, the works represents the largest European maritime construction project of the 21st century (so far). Calais is already home to continental Europe’s largest passenger port, welcoming on average 10 million passengers every year, as well as an extensive freight operation.

Work began in 2015, and the project aims to bring about a 40 percent increase in cross-channel traffic by 2030. It benefited from €270 million of public funding, including €98.5 million in European subsidies.

The new port section will begin running on October 4th.

More passengers

The extension of the port will double the previous capacity, meaning more possibilities for visitors travelling from Dover. The project creates 90 hectares of additional docking area, including three new ferry berths which will be able to accommodate larger ferries of up to 240 metres in length.

According to France Bleu, the DFDS ferry company will soon be running 34 journeys to Dover every day, compared to 15 at the moment.

Irish Ferries became the third company to operate Dover-Calais ferries when it launched a new service on the route on June 29th, 2021, joining DFDS and P&O.

“This new ship from DFDS, ‘Côte d’Opale’, do you think it would be there if there wasn’t this new port?” president of the Hauts-de-France region and presidential hopeful Xavier Bertrand said in a speech during the inauguration of the project on Thursday.

“Do you think Irish Ferries would be here if it wasn’t for this new port and these new possibilities? Never in a million years.”

READ ALSO Six reasons to visit Calais (apart from duty-free shopping)

Local authorities are hoping the renovated port will attract increasing numbers of British visitors, and that the benefit will be felt by Calais as a whole.

“British people should no longer simply pass through, but stop and spend their holiday in Calais,” the town’s mayor, Natacha Bouchart, told BFM on Thursday.

She said planning work had been undertaken to make it safer for people walking from the port to the beach, and visitors can also benefit from public transport, which was made free in Calais in January 2020.

Duty free

A key element in attracting visitors from England is the creation of a 1,000 square-metre duty free shop, also set to open in October. 

The extension will double the port’s capacity. Photo: DENIS CHARLET / AFP.

Tax-free sales were abolished within the European Union in 1999, but as a consequence of Brexit, since January 1st British travellers have been allowed to buy “duty free” alcohol, cigarettes and other items at specialised shops in ports or airports, or onboard planes and ferries.

Customs limits

However, new UK customs rules mean ‘booze cruises’ could in fact become more difficult. If you want to avoid paying import duties in the UK, you’ll have to limit your duty-free purchases to the allowances in place since the beginning of the year.

For alcohol, you are allowed to bring back to the UK:

  • 42 litres of beer
  • 18 litres (24 standard bottles) of still wine
  • 4 litres of spirits OR 9 litres (12 bottles) of sparkling wine, fortified wine or any alcoholic beverage less than 22% ABV

If you are purchasing tobacco, you cannot exceed:

  • 200 cigarettes OR
  • 100 cigarillos OR
  • 50 cigars OR
  • 250g tobacco OR
  • 200 sticks of tobacco for heating
  • or any proportional combination of the above

For everything else, you cannot bring back goods worth a total of more than £390, or you will have to pay tax and duty on everything.

The impact on freight

The port investment project is not just aimed at passengers, it is also designed to facilitate a growth in freight traffic. As well as being able to welcome larger ferries, the focus is also on the development of modal transfer, and being able to transfer more unaccompanied freight. In June, DFDS launched a new unaccompanied freight service between Calais and Sheerness in Kent.

Menna Rawlings, the British ambassador to France, attended the inauguration, tweeting that the new port “should improve fluidity for lorries and travellers”.

Calais has recently suffered from customs delays and a fall in passenger numbers due first to Brexit and then the Covid pandemic. Passenger numbers fell by 61 percent in 2020, while freight traffic was down 8 percent.

In October 2018, Bouchart said Calais would need to invest around €20 million to create a new customs system for both the port and the Eurotunnel in response to Brexit. The port of Calais confirmed to The Local that Brexit preparations are independent of the €863 million port investment.

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TRAVEL NEWS

How do the EU’s new EES passport checks affect the 90-day rule?

As European travellers prepare for the introduction of enhanced passport checks known as the Entry & Exit System (EES), many readers have asked us what this means for the '90-day rule' for non-EU citizens.

Published: 1 May 2024 07:18 CEST
How do the EU's new EES passport checks affect the 90-day rule?

From the start date to the situation for dual nationals and non-EU residents living in the EU, it’s fair to say that readers of The Local have a lot of questions about the EU’s new biometric passport check system known as EES.

You can find our full Q&A on how the new system will work HERE, or leave us your questions HERE.

And one of the most commonly-asked questions was what the new system changes with regards to the 90-day rule – the rule that allows citizens of certain non-EU countries (including the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) to spend up to 90 days in every 180 in the EU without needing a visa.

And the short answer is – nothing. The key thing to remember about EES is that it doesn’t actually change any rules on immigration, visas etc.

Therefore the 90-day rule continues as it is – but what EES does change is the enforcement of the rule.

90 days 

The 90-day rule applies to citizens of a select group of non-EU countries;

Albania, Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, El Salvador, Georgia, Grenada, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Kiribati, Kosovo, Macau, Malaysia, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, New Zealand, Nicaragua, North Macedonia, Palau, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Serbia, Seychelles, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Taiwan, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Vatican City and Venezuela.

Citizens of these countries can spend up to 90 days in every 180 within the EU or Schengen zone without needing a visa or residency permit.

People who are citizens of neither the EU/Schengen zone nor the above listed countries need a visa even for short trips into the EU – eg an Indian or Chinese tourist coming for a two-week holiday would require a visa. 

In total, beneficiaries of the 90-day rule can spend up to six months in the EU, but not all in one go. They must limit their visits so that in any 180-day (six month) period they have spent less than 90 days (three months) in the Bloc.

READ ALSO How does the 90-day rule work?

The 90 days are calculated according to a rolling calendar so that at any point in the year you must be able to count backwards to the last 180 days, and show that you have spent less than 90 of them in the EU/Schengen zone.

You can find full details on how to count your days HERE.

If you wish to spend more than 90 days at a time you will have to leave the EU and apply for a visa for a longer stay. Applications must be done from your home country, or via the consulate of your home country if you are living abroad.

Under EES 90-day rule beneficiaries will still be able to travel visa free (although ETIAS will introduce extra changes, more on that below).

EES does not change either the rule or how the days are calculated, but what it does change is the enforcement.

Enforcement

One of the stated aims of the new system is to tighten up enforcement of ‘over-stayers’ – that is people who have either overstayed the time allowed on their visa or over-stayed their visa-free 90 day period.

At present border officials keep track of your time within the Bloc via manually stamping passports with the date of each entry and exit to the Bloc. These stamps can then be examined and the days counted up to ensure that you have not over-stayed.

The system works up to a point – stamps are frequently not checked, sometimes border guards incorrectly stamp a passport or forget to stamp it as you leave the EU, and the stamps themselves are not always easy to read.

What EES does is computerise this, so that each time your passport is scanned as you enter or leave the EU/Schengen zone, the number of days you have spent in the Bloc is automatically tallied – and over-stayers will be flagged.

For people who stick to the limits the system should – if it works correctly – actually be better, as it will replace the sometimes haphazard manual stamping system.

But it will make it virtually impossible to over-stay your 90-day limit without being detected.

The penalties for overstaying remain as they are now – a fine, a warning or a ban on re-entering the EU for a specified period. The penalties are at the discretion of each EU member state and will vary depending on your personal circumstances (eg how long you over-stayed for and whether you were working or claiming benefits during that time).

ETIAS 

It’s worth mentioning ETIAS at this point, even though it is a completely separate system to EES, because it will have a bigger impact on travel for many people.

ETIAS is a different EU rule change, due to be introduced some time after EES has gone live (probably in 2025, but the timetable for ETIAS is still somewhat unclear).

It will have a big impact on beneficiaries of the 90-day rule, effectively ending the days of paperwork-free travel for them.

Under ETIAS, beneficiaries of the 90-rule will need to apply online for a visa waiver before they travel. Technically this is a visa waiver rather than a visa, but it still spells the end of an era when 90-day beneficiaries can travel without doing any kind of immigration paperwork.

If you have travelled to the US in recent years you will find the ETIAS system very similar to the ESTA visa waiver – you apply online in advance, fill in a form and answer some questions and are sent your visa waiver within a couple of days.

ETIAS will cost €7 (with an exemption for under 18s and over 70s) and will last for three years.

Find full details HERE. 

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