France is accelerating the recruitment of up to 700 customs officers before Brexit. “The more we think the worst should be avoided, the more we think it’s not impossible it could eventually happen,” Prime Minister Édouard Phillippe said last week.
On the British side, the government has floated converting a stretch of the M20 motorway in Kent, which runs to the coastal town of Dover, into a vast parking lot for trucks. If the country is no longer in the customs union, new delays in processing truck arrivals could cause a 17-mile line of traffic, according to the Dover port authority.
Companies worried about supply chain disruptions are scrambling to cope. The European aerospace giant Airbus employs over 14,000 people in Britain making massive wings for its planes. Some parts must go back and forth between Britain and the European Union before final assembly. So any transport holdup could wreak havoc with production.
Tom Enders, the company’s chief executive, who threatened last month to leave Britain unless there was more clarity on Brexit, said on Wednesday that he was activating Brexit “contingency plans” after Mrs. May’s proposal appeared to be “unraveling.” Airbus’s Plan B involves creating a stock of inventory so that the company can continue manufacturing after Britain leaves the bloc, he said.
Other firms have been stockpiling goods to prepare for an Armageddon scenario. Warehouse space in Britain has been filling up at record rates as companies from electronics producers to appliance makers stock inventories to meet demand in case they cannot get supplies quickly, according to KPMG, the professional services firm.
Even Britain’s own Department of Health is examining how to ensure continuity in the supply chain for medicines, vaccines, radioisotope products and medical devices under different Brexit outcomes — including if the country comes crashing out, Simon Stevens, the chief executive of the National Health Service, told a parliamentary committee.
“Nobody,” Mr. Stevens said, “is suggesting that this is a desirable situation in which to find ourselves.”
Source : Nytimes
