Eurostar seeking financial aid

[Pandora]

Eurostar having lost 95% of passenger traffic and currently running only a one train per day  to / from St Pancras via the Channel Tunnel is predicted to run out of money by April.

Eurostar is seeking State Aid money from France and the UK.

Post- Brexit, Is the UK obliged to pay into a rescue fund for the Eurostar  operation?

[crompton 33]

Eurostar is 55% owned by the french.  5 or 10% by Belgium.  England  0% we sold it off a few years ago. So no we are not obliged to help.

Edited January 21, 2021 by crompton 33

[Fat Controller]

2 hours ago, crompton 33 said:

Eurostar is 55% owned by the french.  5 or 10% by Belgium.  England  0% we sold it off a few years ago. So no we are not obliged to help.

The UK's share was sold to a Canadian teachers' pension fund, as part of the ongoing sale of the family silver.

[Zomboid]

The government has chosen to support a lot of businesses that it has no obligation to, on the basis that more damage would be caused if they didn't.

 

If they're willing to support aviation, then Eurostar ought to be eligible for similar support, if not then it's hard to see how subsidising a privately owned international rail operation would be justified.

[Derekl]

Reported in the Guardian today that the French government have agreed to support it and expect a contribution from the UK.

 

Elsewhere it was suggested that Eurostar is more important to the UK that Europe in that its HQ is in the UK and most passengers are British.

 

It has also been suggested, as above, that if airlines with European based traffic are being supported, then Eurostar ought to be as well. Also suggested that there is an analogy with support for UK rail, although I am not sure that it is the same issue.

[woodenhead]

If you are supporting one method of travel into Europe but not another then it does appear one sided, given than an electric railway with modern trains is a lot more green than flying planes it has to be in the Government's interest to maintain said rail link if it truly wants to be promoting an emissions free future.

 

It's not a European problem and surely the UK gains more than Europe from the fixed link.

[Oldddudders]

And some of us quasi-Europeans rely on Eurostar. It is a brilliant and relatively green city-centre to city-centre service, but flexible enough to also provide ski-trains in season, Disney trains in skool holidays, and had recently expanded the offer to Amsterdam as well as the Brussels trains which were there from Day 1. It would be awful to let it go. 

 

Edited for English!

Edited January 22, 2021 by Oldddudders

[Roddy Angus]

18 hours ago, crompton 33 said:

Eurostar is 55% owned by the french.  5 or 10% by Belgium.  England  0% 

Is any part of Eurostar owned by the Welsh, Irish or Scots then?

 

Roddy

[Pandora]

If the various Govts provide funding to keep afloat Eurostar, does the funding constitute "State Aid" to an Industry.

What is the Eu position on State Aid?  I think  State Aid to ailing companies   is monitored  and discouraged by the EU  and subject to legal constraints and judgements by  the EU Courts.

 

[MarkC]

As things stand, Eurostar is of no real use to most of the UK, I would suggest, basis time and cost compared to flying. The cost of having to get into Central London & then get across the city (unless arriving at KX or St Pancras anyway), & then your Eurostar ticket, is almost always going to exceed low cost airlines, even with all the add-ons. Had the North of London services got started then things may well have been different, but as it is, no. As for times, again it just doesn't stack up.

 

I doubt there will be much support for Eurostar outside of the M25, as the saying goes, (and SE England, I should add), particularly as we have no stake in it.

 

I do find it amusing, though, that many folk elsewhere on social media seem to think that Eurostar, Eurotunnel and Le Shuttle are the same outfit...

 

Mark

Edited January 22, 2021 by MarkC

[MarkC]

10 minutes ago, MarkC said:

Duplicate post - deleted

 

Edited January 22, 2021 by MarkC

[phil-b259]

8 minutes ago, MarkC said:

As things stand, Eurostar is of no real use to most of the UK, I would suggest, basis time and cost compared to flying. The cost of having to get into Central London & then get across the city (unless arriving at KX or St Pancras anyway), & then your Eurostar ticket, is almost always going to exceed low cost airlines, even with all the add-ons. Had the North of London services got started then things may well have been different, but as it is, no. As for times, again it just doesn't stack up.

 

I doubt there will be much support for Eurostar outside of the M25, as the saying goes, particularly as we have no stake in it.

 

 

 

Not so!

 

St Pancras is easily accessible from a wide variety of places in the South East thanks to Thameslink or SE high speed services and in better days drew significant patronage despite there also being good rail links to Gatwick and Luton airports. In pre Covid times there were a reasonable number of travellers from Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Hertfordshire Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, etc. not just Londoners using Eurostar.

 

Yes it might be more expensive than a budget airline ticket but not everyone is obsessed by money (or wishes to be squashed into the ridiculously tight seating fitted by said 'low cost' airlines you know - if you book ahead then some of the Eurostar fares are were very reasonable and the train is far more environmentally friendly than a plane.

 

Granted nobody from Birmingham or Nottingham is going to spend ages travelling down to St Pancras when they have airports on their doorstep, but thats not the point. Rapid expansion of Low cost airlines and a refusal of the UK to join the Schengen zone killed the idea of regional Eurostars stone dead well before the London based operation started and that isn't going to change now.

 

I have no 'stake' in the Welsh Valley lines - yet part of my tax goes to pay for them, dito Scotrail - should I be pissed off with the amount of money being chucked at them by the Government?

 

 

[MarkC]

3 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Not so!

 

St Pancras is easily accessible from a wide variety of places in the South East thanks to Thameslink or SE high speed services and in better days drew significant patronage despite there also being good rail links to Gatwick and Luton airports. In pre Covid times there were a reasonable number of travellers from Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Hertfordshire Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, etc. not just Londoners using Eurostar.

 

Yes it might be more expensive than a budget airline ticket but not everyone is obsessed by money (or wishes to be squashed into the ridiculously tight seating fitted by said 'low cost' airlines you know - if you book ahead then some of the Eurostar fares are were very reasonable and the train is far more environmentally friendly than a plane.

 

Granted nobody from Birmingham or Nottingham is going to spend ages travelling down to St Pancras when they have airports on their doorstep, but thats not the point. Rapid expansion of Low cost airlines and a refusal of the UK to join the Schengen zone killed the idea of regional Eurostars stone dead well before the London based operation started and that isn't going to change now.

 

I have no 'stake' in the Welsh Valley lines - yet part of my tax goes to pay for them, dito Scotrail - should I be pissed off with the amount of money being chucked at them by the Government?

 

 

I did mention SE England, to be fair.

 

However, whilst you make some valid points regarding seating etc, and indeed money, time is a big factor, and I'm afraid that money DOES come into a lot of peoples' thoughts when making trips.

 

As for Schengen killing off regional Eurostars - nah, that could have been resolved if the will was there, but hey... No, it was time, again, because HS2 never got going when it should have done, but that's yet another political argument, which we don't do here.

 

Finally, regional rail and payments to it - that's the system we have here, but it's our railway, not a privately owned operator, which is what Eurostar is. We don't even have a stake in it, so why should we bail it out?  We can actually do without Eurostar - if it goes bust, another operator will take it over. The infrastructure is the important thing, and that's what a lot of the money going into the likes of Scotrail & Valley services requires, as part of keeping areas going. There is a difference.

[Ken.W]

17 minutes ago, MarkC said:

 

As for Schengen killing off regional Eurostars - nah, that could have been resolved if the will was there, but hey... No, it was time, again, because HS2 never got going when it should have done, but that's yet another political argument, which we don't do here.

 

 

Never mind HS2 not getting going when it should have, HS1 didn't let alone HS2.

When the tunnel opened the high speed Paris - Calais line was already open and ready for it

Here? They were still arguing about the route of HS1

 

As far as support for Eurostar goes though, as the Govt have provided support for privately owned international airlines, then surely a more environmentally friendly international rail service should also receive support

[MarkC]

1 hour ago, Ken.W said:

 

Never mind HS2 not getting going when it should have, HS1 didn't let alone HS2.

When the tunnel opened the high speed Paris - Calais line was already open and ready for it

Here? They were still arguing about the route of HS1

 

As far as support for Eurostar goes though, as the Govt have provided support for privately owned international airlines, then surely a more environmentally friendly international rail service should also receive support

Mmm, yes indeed - HS1. Very true. Good point.

 

As for supporting the airlines - they're nominally UK based & serve the UK pretty widely, don't they? Whereas Eurostar... 

[Arun Sharma]

Let us not forget that Eurostar is only one of two TOCs that operate trains through the Chunnel. Le Shuttle which also carries cars, trucks and people from UK to continental Europe appears to be having no problems. 

My feeling is that the immediate kneejerk reaction is from people who do not realise that the UK has no financial interest in the Eurostar TOC and confuse it with ownership of the Chunnel - a point which those with vested interests do little to disabuse the laity of.

If Eurostar goes down the plughole, no doubt another train operating company will appear having brought up its assets cheaply and be cheerfully waiting in the wings for Lockdown to go away.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Arun Sharma

[phil-b259]

2 hours ago, MarkC said:

 

 

As for Schengen killing off regional Eurostars - nah, that could have been resolved if the will was there, but hey... No, it was time, again, because HS2 never got going when it should have done, but that's yet another political argument, which we don't do here.

 

 

 

The impacts from Schengen should not be dismissed quite so lightly. At certain times of the day large numbers of domestic French customers used Eurostar from Paris to Lille and Lille to Brussels - this meant Eurostar was not solely reliant on international passengers for revenue.

 

Because the UK refused to be part of the Schengen area it meant that domestic and international passengers cannot mix - which at a stroke torpedoes any business case for regional Eurostar services in the UK as you will be carting a lot of Fresh air about. Not having a link to HS2 is irrelevant - using up train paths on HS2 (or the WCML) for a 3/4s empty Eurostar every couple of hours rather than running a fully loaded domestic service is plain madness.

 

The ideal way of running regional Eurostars in the UK is to have a mix of Domestic and International passengers as far as London - where the Domestic passengers get replaced (and by that I mean the international ones stay on the train and do not get frogmarched off to traipse through security again) with ones from the Capital for the run onwards to Europe after a short pause.

 

2 hours ago, MarkC said:

 

 

However, whilst you make some valid points regarding seating etc, and indeed money, time is a big factor, and I'm afraid that money DOES come into a lot of peoples' thoughts when making trips.

 

 

 

If money was so important then Waitrose, M&S, Bentley, Rolls Royce, etc would have gone out of business long ago!

 

Its a fact that there will always be a segment of any market that are willing to pay more for a superior product - and Eurostar is most definitely superior to the likes of Ryan Air, Wizz Air and EasyJet in terms of on board ambiance plus delivering you to the city centre rather than an airport miles away.

 

 

[melmerby]

2 hours ago, MarkC said:

 

Finally, regional rail and payments to it - that's the system we have here, but it's our railway, not a privately owned operator, which is what Eurostar is. We don't even have a stake in it, so why should we bail it out?  We can actually do without Eurostar - if it goes bust, another operator will take it over. The infrastructure is the important thing, and that's what a lot of the money going into the likes of Scotrail & Valley services requires, as part of keeping areas going. There is a difference.

Wrong, wrong wrong.

Who owns the UK TOCs?

Chiltern & Cross Country? Arriva > DB > German Federal Government, No UK owwnership.

c2c? Trenitalia> Italian Government through FS. No UK ownership.

East Midlands Railway? Abellio> NS> Dutch Government. No UK ownership.

 

Etc. Etc.

[phil-b259]

59 minutes ago, MarkC said:

Mmm, yes indeed - HS1. Very true. Good point.

 

As for supporting the airlines - they're nominally UK based & serve the UK pretty widely, don't they? Whereas Eurostar... 

 

Airlines are massively polluting and pay no tax on the fuel they use.

 

Pandemic or no pandemic the future of the planet depends on LESS flights not more - and as such Eurostar needs to be there when travel restrictions are eased.

 

Providing taxpayer support to airports and airlines which are ruining the planet while at the same time denying it to a rail operator which is acting to reduce said pollution by removing the need to fly is perverse and should not be allowed to happen.

[APOLLO]

 

Brit15

[melmerby]

As to the low cost airlines

Wizz Air is Hungarian, Ryanair is Irish, Easy Group which owns 33% of Easyjet is registered in the Cayman Islands!

[APOLLO]

Is the Chanel Tunnel of strategic importance to the UK ? - Perhaps yes it is, so I do not resent some Government assistance, but this must be in the form of a loan, and if not repaid then a % ownership. We can't afford a gift to a 100% foreign owned company.

 

Brit15

[Pandora]

If the UK Treasury does fund  a rescue of Eurostar, then there could be a legal surety upon the trains, if the money is not paid back then we keep all or part of the fleet.

Could be a cheap method of acquiring stock for HS2 or other future electrification projects , Eurostar trains were used on the ECML alongside class 91 sets,  I rode them, pretty  decent trains. an opportunity for a  bargain

Edited January 23, 2021 by Pandora

[Dagworth]

7 minutes ago, Pandora said:

Eurostar trains were used on the ECML alongside class 91 sets,  I rode them, pretty  decent trains. an opportunity for a  bargain

Most of the class 373 sets have gone to the big trainset in the sky now. Not sure if their replacements are to UK loading gauge?

 

Andi

[melmerby]

24 minutes ago, Dagworth said:

Most of the class 373 sets have gone to the big trainset in the sky now. Not sure if their replacements are to UK loading gauge?

 

Andi

The class 374 have a considerably longer car length, e.g. the driving vehicles are 25.7m (84' 4") compared to the class 373's 22.15m (72' 8").

Even if they are the same width (9' 3") the length could put them outside the loading gauge.

However I have read that they are to "UIC gauge" which could make them up to 3.15m or about 10' 4" wide.