Queen Elizabeth II crossed the English Channel by luxury train Friday to join President Francois Mitterrand in inaugurating the $15 billion Channel Tunnel, the first land link between France and Britain.
The two heads of state, side by side in a light rain, cut a red, white and blue ribbon at the French end of the "Chunnel," the high point of daylong celebrations in both countries."We now have a land border, madame," Mitterrand told the queen. "Calais is no more than half an hour from Folkstone."
The two later got into the queen's burgundy Rolls Royce and drove slowly onto one of the new shuttle trains for the journey back to a second ceremony at the English terminal in Folkstone.
The pageantry was highly symbolic, with one of mankind's greatest engineering feats ushering in a new era in the two countries' fractious history. Speaker after speaker hailed it as a triumph for European unity.
There was no mention that regular train service is still not running through the underwater passage a year after it should have opened.
The queen, who spoke in French, said the two nations had put their sometimes volatile past behind them to create a link that mixed "French elan and British pragmatism."
"This is the first time in history that the heads of state of France and Britain have been able to meet each other without either of them having to travel by sea or air," she said.
"To rejoin what nature separated some 40 million years ago has been a recurring dream of statesmen and engineers for several centuries."
The "Chunnel" will connect Britain and the mainland with high-speed passenger trains and shuttle trains piggybacking automobiles and trucks between the French and British coasts. There will also be freight trains.
Eurotunnel, the Anglo-French operator, hopes shuttles can start ferrying trucks in a few days. Passenger trains and car shuttles may start this summer for special guests. But regular, scheduled service is unlikely until the fall, at an expected cost of about $300 per car.
The services should have been running in March 1993, but technical delays and safety tests caused postponements. The queen and Mitterrand had scheduled Friday's inauguration months ago and went ahead anyway.
Joining the monarch were Prince Philip, Prime Minister John Major and his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, who signed the deal to build the tunnel.
Other guests included Premier Edouard Balladur of France and the European Commission president, Jacques Delors, a Frenchman.
The ribbon-cutting was broadcast live on French and British television.
The Channel Tunnel fulfills a dream of Napoleon's and a nightmare for some Britons who see the 21-mile-wide channel as a moat against conquest, rabies and other ills from the continent.
The Chunnel is actually two one-way rail tunnels with a smaller service tunnel between them. Each is 31.4 miles long. Giant satellite-guided boring machines dug them into the seabed an average 132 feet below the Straits of Dover.
The shuttles can transport cars and trucks between the coasts an hour faster than the traditional ferries, which are improving on-board food and amusements to meet the competition.
Tunnel backers contend the three-hour train ride between Paris and London is faster than the one-hour flight once transport to airports and check-in is taken into account.
The time will fall to 2 hours when high-speed track is laid in Britain, probably early next century. Homeowners in densely populated southeast England have protested the line.
The project has been as costly as it is impressive. The original estimate has nearly doubled, to $13.1 billion. Investors will be asked for $750 million more later this year.