‘It’s quite amazing,” declares Eurostar’s Gwendoline Cazenave, fresh from St Pancras International station in London, where the cross-Channel rail operator has just launched its facial recognition check-in for business travellers. “You don’t need a ticket any more, you don’t need a passport to exit the UK.”
Passengers still go through security screening and France’s own passport control at the London end, but two of the four checks to reach the train are automatically cleared as registered users walk past recognition cameras, she says. Then, “safety checks and X-rays, the French border police, and … entry France!”
The French chief executive describes the technology as “key” for a firm whose recovery after Covid has been significantly hampered by border constraints.
A short walk from St Pancras, the Eurostar office where we meet has retrenched across the sixth floor of the building it shares with the Observer, leaving empty suites still bearing Eurostar signs. The actual train network has likewise contracted and reoriented: direct trains from the UK to Disneyland and the south of France have been axed, with the London-Amsterdam route currently imperilled, as the pandemic and Brexit compels Eurostar to prune back to core routes.
Meanwhile, the company has a new focus in continental Europe after the completion of a merger with rival Franco-Belgian operator Thalys this year. From Brussels, where the new parent group’s HQ is located, things look a bit rosier, with an extra 5 million passengers a year on the simpler, intra-EU routes down to Cologne in Germany.
Cazenave thinks they can double the total: “Our growth project is really huge – building the backbone of sustainable travel to reach 30 million passengers in 2030.”
She divides her time between the Brussels and London HQs, popping home to Paris at weekends. The rebranded Eurostar trains plying the old Thalys routes were unveiled in the Belgian capital earlier this year, where Cazenave spoke of the potential to sell more and more through-routes around Europe.
Eurostar’s growth has notoriously undershot past predictions, and Cazenave says it will be a slow process: “It’s about booking systems, it’s about fares, it’s about connections, timetables, and so on. So to build this, it’s not going to be done in one day. But that’s the project – so that this backbone has connections with the whole European network.”
From the UK perspective, though, that is a tougher sell. Days before our interview came confirmation that the direct ski train from St Pancras, operated as a charter since Covid, was to be axed this winter.
Eurostar trains were leaving London a third empty last year, with a limit on seat sales because of the time it takes to process passengers, while passport control at Amsterdam meant even fewer seats could be occupied on what should be one of Europe’s most popular routes, given the volume of air traffic between London and the Dutch capital. The border issues, intensified since Brexit, add anguishing complexity to what might otherwise be a fast intercity train service, slowing journeys and constraining capacity.
The new St Pancras biometric check-in is potentially much more than good PR, even if Eurostar claims to be the first rail operator to use the technology (some time after a number of international airports). “For us, it’s key to have this innovative way of crossing borders,” Cazenave says. It allows Eurostar “to showcase that this seamless border crossing is not science fiction, to showcase it to all stakeholders” – not least the French border police, with EES, the EU’s entry-exit system, fast approaching.
The present post-Brexit difficulties, which mean that every UK passport has to be stamped by border police, will be magnified by EES. The system is expected to come into operation after the Paris Olympics next year, necessitating a slew of additional biometric information to be collected by immigration officers.
That could mean another 24 kiosks and longer waits at already-squeezed St Pancras. Or, Cazenave hopes, the authorities will listen to pleas to allow most of the process to happen in advance online, rather than entirely under the supervision of border police. “What we are pushing with the EU is to have more pre-registration operations done on your couch.”
If running a rail network whose efficacy depends on several agencies and governments is frustrating, Cazenave is at pains not to say so. The Port of Dover is similarly alarmed about EES, and as its chief executive, Doug Bannister, recently suggested to MPs, it shouldn’t be beyond human ingenuity to send the required electronic copies of the same documents at the same time to both the French and UK border agencies.
But Cazenave – who spent 20 years in the French railways, running the high-speed TGV Atlantique service, and briefly working as a consultant before joining Eurostar in 2022 – says she “wouldn’t want to tell the border police how to do their job”. She likewise declines to comment on the impact of Brexit (or indeed on the state of Britain’s railways, or similar issues that she deems outside her remit). “You know, that’s the way it is. Our challenge is to deal with the situation.”
Her preference appears to be quiet diplomacy rather than making a point through the media. “The main challenge for me is to put everyone around the table to say ‘OK, we all of us have the same objective, to grow sustainably’. Everybody’s OK when you say that. With the French police, we began to talk, and they hired people. We are improving.”
That has allowed Eurostar services to depart St Pancras now with only 5% of seats empty – a far less significant drain on revenue. The threatened closure of the London-Amsterdam route, due to work on the main station, is yet to be averted, however, despite spending “a lot of time” trying to find solutions with the Dutch government – “and we’re on our way now, it’s not finished.”
The former Thalys network, meanwhile, will offer a reprieve of sorts to British skiers, who will be able to book a connecting Eurostar service from Brussels to the Alps from Saturdays in December. “So you know, proof-points by proof-points, we’re going to make it.”
CV
Age 53
Family Married with two children – husband in Paris, a daughter in London and a son in Brussels. “You cannot see it when you meet me, but deep inside me, before everything, I’m a mother.”
Education Studied business at Reims, France, and McGill, Canada.
Pay Declines to say.
Last holiday “At home with family at Christmas” – although she was about to head off for a summer break.
Best advice she’s been given “Dare!”
Phrase she overuses “‘When there’s a will there’s a way’… My will!”
Biggest career mistake “I didn’t spend enough time to listen to my stakeholders” when running trains in Brittany.
How she relaxes With family; travelling; watching dance.
