After successfully completing the work to ensure customs checks can be carried out whilst keeping traffic flowing as smoothly as possible and after several dry runs, the Normandy channel ports - Le Havre for HAROPA and Caen-Ouistreham, Cherbourg and Dieppe for Ports of Normandy - have joined forces to help supply chain actors to be as ready as they can be for Brexit when it comes into force on 1 January, producing a series of handy fact sheets and organising site visits.
The border crossing process will rely on the smart border system, which is designed to keep port traffic moving in spite of the tighter controls due to Brexit.
Trial runs have confirmed that the entire process is operational: from pairing at the port of embarkation to inspection of the goods, if required. All the equipment has been tested: information systems, port layouts and flows, on-board information, coordination between all the actors, etc. Every action that needs to be carried out by every agent has been tried and tested.
The results of these trials have been ‘satisfactory’, according to the port partners at least for the French side, stakeholders have been assured that they ‘can be confident that everything will go off without a hitch on 1 January 2021’.
By Jake Frith
