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Nothing to declare

As is obvious from reading this blog, we boys and girls at Samizdata are not exactly big fans of the European Union and its attendant horrors of red tape and regulation. So, here’s an interesting experience of mine from last weekend. I managed to leave and enter France and then return without having a single item of paperwork inspected, including my passport. How come?

Well, I sailed to Cherbourg on a yacht from Portsmouth, stayed overnight in France and came back to Portsmouth. No passport check was carried out at either end. Now, I am sure if British Home Secretary David Blunkett were reading this (dream on!), he’d be aghast. (“You mean people can travel, breathe and eat without my express permission? Form a committee!”). But actually, I found the experience rather liberating. I was able to travel, using my own humble skills as a yacht sailor, to travel to and from a Continent without being troubled by officialdom.

And of course I loaded up the boat on cheap wine due to lower French duties on booze. So all in all the whole weekend was a poke in the eye for the offices of the Blairite state. C’est magnifique!

23 comments to Nothing to declare

  • I’m not totally sure about this, but I think that even if you had sailed to a non-EU country, the onus would be on you to fly a yellow flag inviting customs to check your boat. While in theory there are harsh penalties for not doing so, in practice it’s always been easy to get away with it on short visits in which you don’t have the misfortune of getting inspected anywhere.

    Of course I could take this opportunity to point out that were you sailing between France and, say, Belgium, there would be no paperwork for you to dodge anyway.

  • Susan

    I’m assuming, Johnathan, that you’d be in favour of Britain signing up to Schengen, then?

  • I suspect Johnathan, like myself, is not in favour of Schengen but rather is in favour of completely open borders with all the world rather than the favoured few… which would also have the happy effect of causing the collapse of socialized healthcare and most other socialized public ‘services’ as people flood in. Juicy.

    Ideally however, it should happen the other way around: FIRST abolish tax funded public ‘services’ that are ‘free’ at the point of use and THEN declare completely open borders to peaceable immigrants.

  • Of course, Jonathan does illustrate the essential idiocy of the passport and immigration controls we have. They do a fine job of making life harder for decent and law abiding people, but if anyone want to genuinely enter the country for criminal purposes, doing so is utterly trivial.

  • Johan

    “…which would also have the happy effect of causing the collapse of socialized healthcare and most other socialized public ‘services’ as people flood in.”

    – Perry de Havilland

    ..hmm…reminds me of what’s happening here (in Sweden). A majority of all the immigrants coming here live of what we call “A-Kassa”, that is, they’re spending my tax money doing nothing. They don’t work or such, but they get money anyway. If the govt. wouldn’t strain the amount of people coming here – indeed, the socialized healthcare etc. would collapse. However, to say that immigrants are the only ones (ab)using the system is not fair – lots of Swede’s do that too. They just don’t seem to know that a work would benefit them more (even though taxes are crazy and they would only help others who are living of other people’s money). Or they do know that but are just lazy.

  • T. Hartin

    “They just don’t seem to know that a work would benefit them more . . .”

    At a certain level of taxation and publicly funded services and entitlements, it really stops making sense to work. At least as long as the gravy train continues to run. Those Swedes may not be irrational at all – the irrational ones may be the people who actually do the work to support all the deadbeats.

  • Johan

    “the irrational ones may be the people who actually do the work to support all the deadbeats.”

    yes, true 🙂 At the same time, those who are working (and thus supporting the “deadbeats”), do so because a) they reckon they can afford paying the taxes etc. and still live on the money left, or b) they simply don’t know that they are supporting a large group of people not working and therefore they are, as T. Hartin said, the “irrational ones”. But how something like that would pass their minds can be questioned. However, it wouldn’t surprise anyone (not me anyway) if it actually is slipping by unnoticed – lack of knowledge amongst ordinary people of what is going on keeps the rulers in power. It is too common here, that people who vote for the same party every election (here, the Social Democrats – who has been in power pretty much non-stop the past 40-50+ years) do so because they don’t know of any other (better) alternative to socialism. And how is that? They just don’t know. They leave the thinking to “the State”

  • My parents used to mention how fun it was to visit the Canadian side of my family during holidays. It wasn’t until later in life that I found out that crossing the northern border wasn’t troublesome from a paperwork and inspections standpoint. Those days are slowly going away, though my Christmas trip last year wasn’t nearly the hassle I assumed it would be after 9/11.

  • You’ve spotted the only advantage that the EU has. Inadvertantly, but as I’ve just seen how an Irish builder can earn a $900,000 house here in upstate NY, I am not convinced of the rest of the package.

    Yours,

    Philip

  • erp

    Buying French wine (or anything else)? Shame on you. Let them live on the proceeds from their deals with Saddam Hussein.

  • Well, I’m an American, and I used to live in Dublin. I once took the bus to Belfast. Halfway there, I realized that I’d left my passport at my flat in Dublin. No adverse consequences so far.

    Another time I was in Copenhagen, and I took a ferry to Landskrona, Sweden. I realized I’d forgotten my passport in Copenhagen. This time I was a little more concerned. I walked through the door marked “Nothing to declare” and immediately found myself in the parking lot. Whew.

    Does this make you feel any more secure, Mr. Pearce?

  • zack mollusc

    A few years ago I went by bus to france, through belgium to holland and back again and at no point had my passport checked. A huge disappointment after all the running around getting it.

  • There are no passport checks between Britain and Ireland (and I think there never have been – someone might be able to correct me on this), and similarly there has long been free movement without passports between the various Nordic countries. When the Schengen agreement to allow free movement between most of the EU was made, one obstacle was the existing agreement for free movement between Nordic countries, as Norway and Iceland are non-EU, but didn’t want to erect any new borders. Ultimately Norway and Iceland were incorporated into the agreement.

    So in neither of those cases should Mr Haney have expected his passport to be checked.

    However, officially there are passport checks between Britain and France. Your passport is supposed to be checked.

    In the last year, I have had three trips to the Schengen area, two by train and one by ferry. Two of these trips were to France, and the third was to Belgium. My (non-EU) passport was been checked in both directions on all three occasions.

  • mark holland

    In Salzburg airport in early 1993, and this is prior to Austria joining the EU, one of my fellow passengers cajoled a flunky into actually stamping his passport for him. In a split second the guy had about a two dozen passports in front of him all desperate for a stamp in their otherwise empty passports.

  • Andrew Duffin

    I’ve sailed to Cherbourg too, and had the same experience.

    There is no security whatsoever at the marina there, you just stroll off the boat and into the town.

    So much for stopping “smuggling”.

    It’s true there is no checking between UK and Ireland, too. In fact during the Cold War, travelling via Ireland was known as the “back door” into the UK. The Irish never cared, apparently, and once you were in Ireland you just strolled across the border and then got on the ferry to Stranraer.

    These days, though, if you sail a yacht between Scotland and N. Ireland, as I have done, you are quite often shadowed by the RN or called up on the VHF by a very polite well-spoken Englishman who asks where you’re from and where you’re going. I guess it helps if you reply politely, in an English accent. I have never tried any other approach…

  • Tony H

    The least pleasant border experiences I’ve had were crossing by train from W.Germany to the DDR many years ago (brutish, aggressive VOPOs) and getting turned back at the Czech border (they were pretty nasty too) in 2001 because my son’s junior passport didn’t contain a photo…
    But it surprised me how rigorous were the checks on entering Detroit by road from Ontario: a bleak, E.European style concrete office, and though the border police were OK both times, my Canadian friends tell me they’ve had one or two very nasty experiences for no apparent reason: lined up against the wall, treated with arrogant contempt, etc.
    And of course the very different tax regimes mean that re-entering Canada can, it seems, lead to car searches and so on. Never had anything like that in W.Europe. Not drawing any conclusions, just commenting…

  • David Mercer

    Flying from Mexico City back to the US always has the fun of hitting the magic customs button. It randomly gives you a green to proceed, or a red to get searched exhaustively.

  • Dave O'Neill

    There’s no passport requirement for travel between the UK and Ireland, never has been as far as I recall.

    Travel in Europe for Brits is ridiculous at the moment. Although I have often entered France and left France by Eurostar with no checks – they’re all at the UK.

  • Johnathan

    Thanks for the comments. Erp, I see you think I should be ashamed of buying French wine. Well nuts to that. I don’t believe in the collectivist notion that all Frenchmen and women should be made to economically suffer because they are currently led by a decayed cynic like Chirac. I don’t believe in “punishing” a nation in this way. As an individualist, I like to think there are better ways of shafting the French political class without hurting the average Jacques and Sophies out there – such as giving all of the top French entrepreneurs a British passport or an American green card.

    And no disrespect to Napa Valley, but Bordeaux remains the king of the red stuff.

  • T. Hartin

    I’m engaging in a very loose boycott of French products “pour encourager les autres,” as the frogs might say. If enough average French folk feel a pinch, then perhaps they will exercise their democratic rights to get rid of the anti-American bastards who put our lives and servicemen at risk by trying to sabotage the war on Iraq.

    You see, that decayed cynic was elected by the French, so they get to take some of the responsibility for what he does that threatens me and mine. Remember, there is no power without responsibility. If the French want the power that comes with a vote, they get to take some responsibility for what their elected leaders do.

  • Liberty Belle

    Johnathan, French men and women voted the decayed cynic in. By a landslide.

  • Johnathan

    Liberty Belle, T. Hartin, you seem to be keen on the concept of “collective guilt” – ie, the notion that all Frenchmen and women share the blame for Chirac and should get some economic heat as a result. I don’t see how so-called individualists would subscribe to that theory. Interesting.

    Chirac was not elected by a landslide. Under the dumbass rules of the Presidential run-off system, Chirac won against a neo-Nazi after the socialist, Jospin, was elimated in the first round.

    Economic boycotts, more broadly, rarely achieve a direct tangible result anyway. I defy anyone who has commented with predictable disdain for my wine purchases to explain how depriving French grape pickers of work is going to make the French political class and opinion-formers in that country more amenable to persuasion.

    Like I said, giving the best and brightest of French businessmen and women the freedom to emigrate would achieve far more anyway, and it would also be consistent with freemarket principles. I sometimes think the boycotters are just protectionists in drag.

  • Liberty Belle

    Johnathan – With respect, where do you find a French grape picker these days? It’s all done by vast blue machines. (I do take your point, though.)

    French people already have the freedom to emigrate, for heaven’s sake! They’re not serfs! They can apply for permission to live in any countrythey like, or they can go and work/start a business in an EU country of their choice, by right. Alas, France is not hive of eager entrepreneurs, frustrated by the system, but willing to slave 16 hours a day to make their dream come true. They are not brought up to be entrepreneurs. They are brought up to be servants of the state. And the state makes starting a business so onerous it is usually not worth it. Also, to grow a business, you need to hire people and in France, once someone is hired, they cannot be got rid of unless they are convicted of a triple axe murder. That is why French doctors and dentists make their own appointments, answer their own phones during consultations, run credit cards through machines and print out your computerised receipt themselves. If you hire the wrong person, that is your mistake for the next 20 years. The government does not want them back on the rolls, plumping up their shameful unemployment figures.

    Chirac won by a landslide in a largely negative vote against Le Pen. In the run-off, their hero lefty Jospin eliminated, the mighty fonctionaire sector held mass demonstrations throughout France, wearing clothes pegs on their noses and carrying signs that said: Vote for the crook instead of the fascist. On the puppet show Guignol on TV, Chirac is always portrayed in a Superman costume, except the initials SM stand for Super Menteur (Super Liar). They knew who they were voting for.

    Anyway, I do agree with you about the economic efficacy of boycotts. I think they’re more to vent feelings than achieve practical results.