French rail company SNCF has vehemently denied offering migrants free tickets to travel in France or cross the Channel to Britain.
Train officials said reports that people caught up in the migration crisis were being allowed to travel for nothing were not true and insisted the internal memo that sparked the row suggested only that “reservation fees” might be waived.
“There are no free tickets. These people are checked like other passengers, have to be in possession of a ticket like other passengers and can be fined if they don’t, like other passengers,” Christophe Piednoël told Agence France-Presse.
“What was put in place was the possibility of free reservations, so that these (migratory) groups remain together and have numbered seats, which avoid all risk of conflict with other passengers if they sit in seats already reserved.”
He added that some foreigners had difficulty understanding that as well as a ticket they needed a reservation, and the cost of reserving a seat varied from train to train. They often had problems using the automatic ticket machines because of language difficulties or because they had no credit card, he said.
“As far as we are concerned, these are not fraudsters trying to profit from the system, they are people in an exceptional situation who are very often upset and tired. It’s normal that we treat them with humanity,” Piednoël added.
“Almost all of the migrants travel with tickets because they have money to pay for their trip or they are supported by associations who pay for their tickets.”
He said that while all SNCF staff had been advised to “use their discretion” the system of waiving fees, put in place on 5 October, had been used just four times.
The row erupted after the internal SNCF memo became public. It referred to “€0 reservations as an exceptional measure” to “help the placing of a group on board the train and maintain the comfort of other passengers”.
Politicians from the French far-right and centre-right reacted with anger on Wednesday to reports that SNCF was offering free train tickets.
Front National president Marine Le Pen accused the company of doing the “people smugglers’ dirty work” for them.
Le Pen and Xavier Bertrand, the former employment minister in Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right government, both wrote to Guillaume Pepy, the president of SNCF, demanding an explanation.
Bertrand wrote: “If true … the situation is not only incomprehensible but unacceptable.”
The reports, even though untrue, have stoked xenophobic feeling in France in the runup to important regional elections in December.
Asked about the row in the Assemblée National on Wednesday, France’s Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls responded: “Every passenger has to have a ticket and everyone is subject to the same checks.”
