Turns out, two out of every three Eurostar trains from the Netherlands to London depart late… but passengers are left footing the bill for the very border checks causing the delays.
In a statement published yesterday (October 21), Rover, the Dutch association for public transport passengers, called the arrangement unfair and urged MPs to step in before January 1, 2027.
“Train travellers are being hit twice,” director Daan Zieren succinctly puts it. “They pay top dollar for their own border control and get long queues in return.”
An expensive, time-consuming problem
With e-gates missing at Amsterdam Centraal and Rotterdam Centraal stations, all Eurostar passengers have their passports manually checked by hand.
For now, that job falls to the Marechaussee (the Dutch border police), but Rover stresses that there simply aren’t enough officers to keep up with the influx of passengers. As a result, stations feature long passport queues, which regularly push departures back.
Just how bad are things, really? According to Rover’s statement, roughly two out of three Eurostar trains experience a delay, thanks to border checks.
Worse yet, passengers are footing the bill. Eurostar pays around €6 million a year for the Marechaussee’s work at the two stations, and Rover confirms that this cost gets passed on to your ticket prices.
“Meanwhile, air travellers at Schiphol receive a quick, state-funded check,” Zieren says. “This is inexplicable to travellers and is at odds with all climate ambitions.”
London trains may skip the Netherlands altogether
As Rover points out, this isn’t the case in other countries.
Rail operators typically don’t pay for border checks themselves, making international train connections from countries like Belgium, Switzerland, or Germany a much more attractive option for carriers.
“If the Netherlands allows this situation to persist, we will make international train travel unnecessarily expensive and complicated for train travellers in the Netherlands,” says Zieren. “In the long run, it will become more attractive for carriers to operate from Brussels, Frankfurt, or Geneva instead of directly from the Netherlands to London.”
This is especially awkward timing, with Eurostar’s upcoming double-decker trains set to open routes to Geneva and Frankfurt, and Virgin planning its own Amsterdam to London service.
Changes need to start chugging down the track
Key among its suggestions, Rover wants the Dutch House of Representatives to install e-gates at Amsterdam Centraal and Rotterdam Centraal stations.
With quicker screenings, “more capacity could be created with the same deployment of military police”, allowing significantly more passengers to be carried by Eurostar trains. This could, in turn, “lead to cheaper tickets”.
Further, the association also wants rail border checks paid for from the national budget, as Schiphol’s have been for decades.
Dig what you’re reading? Get more of it! Join our WhatsApp channel or Instagram broadcast to get the latest news straight to your pocket.