Eurostar carrying 1/3 fewer passengers between UK and Paris 

The Eurostar boss Gwendoline Cazenave has said its trains between the UK and Paris are carrying 30% fewer passengers. 

Ms Cazenave said there were “bottlenecks” in stations due to post-Brexit border checks and current levels of border staff.

Eurostar is currently running 14 services per day between London and Paris, compared with 18 in 2019. 

She said the company might not restore some of the suspended services due to the problems. 

“The thing is now we are not able to run the same transport offer as what we had before in 2019, because of bottlenecks in stations,” she said.

“We have a main issue in Eurostar terminals because of the new boarding conditions between the UK and EU, because of the impact of Covid, because of staff in the stations.”

The Chief executive added that Eurostar and both French and UK authorities were working hard on solutions such as having more border staff. 

The direct service between London and Disneyland Paris was stopped last year – along with services calling at Ebbsfleet or Ashford International stations due to financial problems caused by losses suffered during the pandemic and post-Brexit border checks. 

Asked if they could be reinstated in the future, Ms Cazenave said: “We’ll see, it depends on the way we can handle the big stations’ issues.”

She said the company’s “objective” was to “be this backbone between big cities”, such as London, Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels.

“These are the main cities, these are the main markets…. we are working for, which is our main role I would say,” she said.