By Ambrose Evens-Pritchard August 11 2019 / The Telegraph
The head of the French channel ports has dismissed warnings of Brexit chaos on the Dover-Calais trade route as irresponsible scare-mongering by political agitators.
“The British authorities have been doing a great deal to prepare. People say they are asleep but I can assure you that they are highly professional and they are ready,” said Jean-Marc Puissesseau, president of Port Boulogne Calais.
“There are certain individuals in the UK who are whipping up this catastrophism for their own reasons. This has provoked a lot of concern but basically ‘c’est la bullsh**’. Nothing is going to happen the day after Brexit,” he told The Telegraph.
“Britain will be a third country, that’s all, and there is no reason why this should lead to any problems. If both sides do their homework traffic will be completely fluid,” he said.
Mr Puissesseau, an anglophile and horse-race afficionado, said alarmist stories of thirteen-mile lorry jams across Kent are based on twisted assumptions by people who do not know what they are talking about, or in some cases the result of distortion by particular interests with an axe to grind.
However, he acknowledged that a no-deal Brexit in March would have been a hair-raising experience. “That would have been a huge problem because nobody believed it was going to happen and they were all dragging their feet. But we have seven more months and this time they are getting ready,” he said.