It is time to take up pitchforks, cudgels and shovels. Citizens should gather outside the Eurotunnel terminal in Folkestone. The French are trying to seize control of the Channel tunnel and we should not tolerate it.
Eurotunnel, the perenially cash-strapped operator of the tunnel and its Shuttle car-carrying trains, has proposed a financial restructuring aimed halving a debt mountain of £6.4bn which threatens its future. Hidden in the small print of the deal is a clause amending its delicately balanced Anglo-Gallic structure to create a French holding company.
This must not be allowed to happen. The Channel tunnel has always been a bi-national venture for good reasons. It is on neutral ground between Britain and France. It is of economic and strategic importance to both nations. Safety and security under the water is critical and needs close supervision by both governments.
More British than French travellers use the tunnel. Almost all the cross-channel ferries are already under overseas control: SeaFrance is subsidised by public money from Paris, P&O is owned by Dubai Ports World, Norfolk Line is Danish-controlled and Brittany Ferries is firmly in the French camp. Apart from a few fringe operators, the only British routes across the Channel are by air.
The Channel tunnel is governed by an inter-governmental commission comprising five delegates from London and the same number from Paris. Curiously, the department for transport refuses to disclose the names of our delegates.
The commission oversees a 99-year concession agreement allowing Eurotunnel to run the tunnel. It requires twin operators - in Britain and France - which to date Eurotunnel has achieved by having two partner companies. The agreement requires the British arm to be "managed and controlled in the United Kingdom and in no other place" - which will not be the case under the proposed new structure.
Allowing the French to take control sets a dangerous precedent. It will be harder for our safety regulators and government delegates to make themselves heard. British and French interests across the channel do not always co-incide: take, for example, the reluctance of France's government to close its Sangatte refugee camp near Calais in 2002 which housed asylum seekers who clung precariously to Channel tunnel trains.
It is not a mere "little England" attitude to suggest that our priorities need to be protected. With a little bit of juggling, Eurotunnel's financial rescue plan could be enacted whilst keeping the company's bi-national balance. Heaven knows what Nicholas Ridley, the late Thatcherite hard-liner who signed the Treaty of Canterbury, would say. The transport secretary, Douglas Alexander, must save our tunnel.
