Eurotunnel reluctantly sold to its subsidiary, the Calais-to-Dover ferry business, MyFerryLink the Danish DFDS, the competitor of the Channel Tunnel reports Le Monde.
The company is a forced seller of the service because of antitrust action. It said it had wanted to sell the business to a workers' cooperative, SCOP SeaFrance, rather than to DFDS.
"The group, regretting that SeaFrance SCOP did not have the necessary support to make a takeover offer, ads engaging accept the tender submitted by DFDS for leasing ships Berlioz and Rodin," the group said in a statement.
On January 9, the British appellate court for Competition (Competition Appeal Tribunal) upheld the position of the authority of the British competition (competition and markets authority, AMF), ruling that the operation of the route Douvres- Calais with Eurotunnel subsidiary represented a distortion of competition by abuse of dominant position in the Channel transport.
Eurotunnel decided in late May not to renew his contract with the operator SeaFrance SCOP Myferrylink Company, and runs until 2 July.
This decision relaunched the uncertainty around the future of the 600 employees of SeaFrance. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday, June 11 to place the company in receivership.
DFDS says it has agreed terms and conditions for a deal involving the 1,500-gt Rodin (built 2001) and the 1,900-passenger Berlioz (built 2005), but no details were disclosed.