Eurostar boss calls on UK to hike airline taxes to fund rail link
The boss of Eurostar has said that the UK should tax airlines more in order to pay for the cross-Channel rail link.
In an interview with the Telegraph, Jacques Damas said such a step would help the government to achieve its net zero ambitions.
He also said that the £250m shareholder rescue in May would only keep the rail service running through the winter.
“If the UK Government wants to commit to its objective for carbon emissions reduction, then they have to activate the right levers,” he said. “This high speed [railway]… has a lot of remaining capacity.
“If you do not want to ban, but give an incentive, it is very easy. If you just work with the taxation system. If you take just £1. Take £1 more in taxing fuel for aircraft, and take that £1 as a reduction in access charges on the railway.”
Unlike in France, where Emmanuel Macron has banned flights which can be covered by direct train journeys of two and a half hours or less, the UK is currently mulling cutting its domestic air passenger taxes.
His comments come with the Eurostar still operating a shell of its previous services after narrowly avoiding bankruptcy after passenger numbers shrunk to just 5.0 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.
After months of cries for help went unanswered, the rail firm’s existing shareholders stepped in to prop up the company.
But the UK government refused to step in, with Grant Shapps saying that Eurostar “was not our company to save”.
Commenting on the refinancing, Damas told the Telegraph: “The refinancing that we have allows us to feed the company until the end of winter.
“Not only must this business recover, this business must be able to repay its enormous debt. At the moment, our debt is reaching one year’s worth of revenue. We are approaching €1bn debt.”