OLIVIER CADIC checked his watch as his commuter train between London and Paris stopped at a market town in the Kent countryside. By the time he was back in his native Paris he had decided to move the headquarters of his electronics company and his family from France to Ashford.

“I bet on a vision,” recalled M Cadic, 44, this week. “It was just two hours to Paris and I understood that this was the future of international business: a city perfectly positioned between the capitals of London, Paris and Brussels.”

Hundreds of French and Belgian businesses have followed him to Ashford in the past decade since the opening of the £100 million station for cross-Channel Eurostar trains.

But just as the town is expecting an enormous expansion, its unique position is in jeopardy. Eurostar announced this week that it was reducing the number of trains that stop at Ashford from twenty-two return journeys a day to four, and ending all direct services to Brussels.

When the London terminus moves from Waterloo to St Pancras next autumn the focus will shift to an international station at Ebbsfleet, 34 miles to the north. The new £200 million station will have 9,000 spaces in one of the world’s biggest park-and-ride schemes. Eurostar expects two thirds of Ashford’s 500,000 passengers to switch to the new station.

Transport analysts suggest that eventually all international services could be removed from the town.

M Cadic said the town had been transformed by the station. “There are many new businesses, a theatre, cinema, leisure centres, shopping centres.”

He became a controversial figure in France when he announced that he was moving to England because of its favour- able business environment. The French Government imposed a “Cadic tax” on businesses leaving the country, but he inspired about 60,000 people to cross the Channel. M Cadic went on to sell his electronics company and became a publisher, which still requires him to commute to Paris and Brussels.

Ashford was expected to double in size over the next 25 years, with 50,000 more residents, 31,000 new homes and 28,000 new jobs.

Jan Post, a director of Europe in England, an Ashford-based company that helps to form new companies and has 115 clients based in France, said: “The town is just getting its café culture and all the nice things about France. Our board will certainly want to consider our future here.”

Richard Brown, the chief executive of Eurostar, said that it could not “stop trains for very low numbers of travellers where it does not make commercial or operational sense”.

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