The front line

FOR many Britons, the first taste of the new unified European currency is likely to be in Calais, the day-trip destination of more than five million booze-cruise shoppers a year.

The British trade is so important to a town where the average visitor spends £90 that a major effort has been mounted to explain how the end of the franc will affect cross-Channel travellers. The main task is to educate visitors about the new exchange rate of about 1.55 euros to the pound rather than the rule-of-thumb conversion of 10 francs to the pound. To that end, hundreds of thousands of leaflets have been printed that proclaim 'Au Revoir French Franc, Bonjour Euro' and 'New Euro Currency, Same Savings'. They have been produced by a consortium of the big Calais interests whose members include P&O Stena Line, the hypermarkets Auchan and Carrefour, Sainsbury's, Eurotunnel and, of course, those inexhaustible marketing professionals, the Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie de Calais.

The chamber has certainly got its work cut out. Over the past four months, it has been presiding over a complex operation to adapt the cash dispensers, shop tills and credit card swipe machines of no fewer than 3,000 member businesses to make transactions in euros while handling the existing francs at the same time.

The cost to each business is substantial. The vast Auchan hypermarket on the outskirts of town is visited daily by more than 2,000 Britons. A euro conversion manager, Frank Galand, has been recruited to train more than 100 check-out operators. His budget includes buying 20,000 devices known as 'convertisseurs' for free distribution to customers. The convertisseurs are small cards which, when tilted, give an instant conversion of francs to euros. Given that the calculation requires multiplying the franc by three then dividing by 20, they are likely to become indispensible when E-Day dawns on 1 January. Trolleys are being converted to take one euro coins.

The first day of 2002 will trigger a longplanned timetable as euro notes and coins go into circulation. No further cheque or credit card payments will be permitted in francs although franc notes and coins will remain in circulation until 17 February.

One of the key questions being asked in France is what the likely effect the introduction of the new currency will have on prices. Certainly, that was also on the mind of British shoppers in Calais. 'I remember what happened in Britain when we decimalised in the Sixties,' Kenneth Bennett, a pensioner from Lancashire, said. 'Prices shot up overnight because of all the confusion.'

In an attempt to avoid that, hypermarket operators and other large stores have given an undertaking not to increase any prices for six months from 1 November. Discussions are under way about extending this period to eight months.

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