In an unusally strong statement posted on Twitter, the European Union's transport commissioner, Adina Valean, commenting on the massive logjam of trucks around the English port of Dover following border restrictions introduced by France after a new contagious strain of the coronavirus was found in the UK, said 'I deplore that France went against our recommendations'.
France has reopened its borders with the Britain – which were closed at the weekend due to fears over the spread of infections by a new coronavirus strain identified in England – on condition that travellers carry proof of testing negative for the virus, but the huge backlog of trucks that have been piling up around the normally busy port of Dover is expected to take days to clear.
France on Sunday joined a growing number of EU countries closing their borders to British travellers following the rapid spread in England of a reportedly more infectious variant of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
The British government on Friday said that travellers arriving from France would not be exempt from a two-week quarantine measure over the Covid-19 virus pandemic, insisting that there had been a misunderstanding about a statement a week ago that said there was no requirement 'at this stage'.
New quarantine measures on people arriving in the UK, who are now required to confine themselves over a 14-day period as a precaution against them otherwise transmitting the Covid-19 virus, will not apply to arrivals from France in a decision announced after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson discussed the issue by phone with French President Emmanuel Macron.
A party of seven men and three women of several nationalities who arrived from Britain in a chartered jet at Marseille-Provence airport, where helicopters were waiting to fly them on to a luxury villa in the Rivierra resort of Cannes, were told by airport police they were breaching regulations to contain the Cofid-19 virus epidemic and ordered to return to the UK.
A Briton who is believed to have spread the deadly coronavirus to five others staying at a French Alps chalet which he visited on his way home from Singapore may also have also infected two other people who have been separately diagnosed as carrying the virus in Spain and the UK.
France, Germany and the UK have set in train a dispute mechanism allowed in a 2015 deal over Iran's nuclear programme, following Tehran's decision to remove limits to its production of enriched uranium which can be used in the making of nuclear weapons.
France has joined the US and Britain in attacks overnight Friday against sites in Syria identified as production plants for chemical weapons, in response to a suspected chemical attack on the Syrian rebel-held town of Douma last week.
A study on migration patterns by the UK Office for National Statistics has found that a majority of the 148,800 Britons it estimates now live in France are aged above 55 and have settled in rural regions, while most of the reported 154,800 French citizens living in the UK are aged 44 or less.
