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0| THE CHANNEL TUNNEL: TRIUMPH OR DISASTER (1 out of 7)

Date Published: May 28, 2006

Mass media and academic papers all commend the Channel Tunnel as a brilliant achievement in the history of civil engineering, not only due to its great length and enormous investment, but also due to the huge quantity of engineering works. The earth excavated from the underground totaled more than 750 million cubic meters, equivalent to the volume of three large Pyramids in Egypt. The steel used by the French side alone for the lining of the main tunnels was sufficient to build three Eiffel Towers. What is more important is that the Channel Tunnel solved many complicated problems in engineering technology. The guiding principles for the use of technology were that it should be reliable and advanced. But reliable and advanced are not always consistent with each other. Therefore, the Channel tunnel almost completely excluded the possibility of specially designed components, and adopted tried and tested technology (Napthine & Smart, 1995, P.123). Standardized designs were carefully selected from different European and American countries in order to ensure their high quality and reliability. From the 1970s, the decision to build the Channel Tunnel was influenced by the progress of European integration. It was due to the positive attitudes of both British and French governments towards European integration that the construction of the Channel Tunnel finally broke ground in December 1987. Mrs. Thatcher, the Prime Minister and the leader of the Conservatives at the time, supported the placing on the agenda of the Channel Tunnel project, which had previously been stopped by the Labor Party in 1975. M.Mitterrand, the French president, viewed it ¡°as the symbol of the power of the state¡± (Gibb, 1994, P.218). The completion of the Channel Tunnel owes a great deal to the important roles these leading figures of the two countries played in the sense that they pushed the process and helped to remove various obstacles. It was in 1993, a year before the formal Channel Tunnel service ceremony was held, that the Maastricht Treaty was signed among the twelve countries of the European Community including the U.K. and France. The European Community was renamed as the European Union.

From the perspective of the governments of the related countries in the European Union, another two crucial factors are linked to the building of the Channel Tunnel. One is transport policy, i.e., the building of the high-speed railway network is beneficial in reducing energy consumption and improving environmental protection, both of which greatly expand the scope of influence of the Channel Tunnel and increase its long-term benefits. The other is regional policy. The U.K. and France hoped that the Channel Tunnel would increase prosperity in the areas along the coastal strips of the Channel. The Transmanche Region became a special term to include Kent in the U.K. and Nord-Pas de Calais in France, and later some areas in Belgium were included to cover a region, which is referred to as Euro region. A financial development program called Tran frontier Development Program (TDP) has now started through regional co-operation. In political terms, the Transmanche region has clearly had an important influence (Gibb, 1994,P.199). It will greatly contribute to the development of the European Union, the forming of the single European market and the co-operation and exchange of international economy and culture although it is unlikely to have direct and significant influence to the economy within a short period of time. In fact, the development of the Channel Tunnel project over the last twenty years is the product of the progress of European integration as well as a motive force for it. The Channel Tunnel and European integration are complementary to each other and have developed in parallel.

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