THE Channel Tunnel is 10 years old. Time for celebration, of course.

But the joy that marked the official opening by the Queen and the French President Francois Mitterand on May 6, 1994, has given way to bitterness, recrimination and uncertainty.

A French shareholder revolution in Paris last month angrily ousted Eurotunnel's Kent-led board of directors amid allegations that they had failed to enhance shareholder value. They have yet to spell out their plans for the future.

Funded entirely by the private sector, the Chunnel has struggled to meet interest let alone capital repayments and still owes a staggering £6.4bn. Banks are poised to take control if the new French-led board fails to convince them with their new business plan.

While there is no disguising the magnitude of the engineering achievement and Eurotunnel's operational performance - it has nearly half of the cross-Channel market - its 10-year life has been bumpy. There will be no public celebrations.

The end of duty-free and the problems faced by the tourist industry, from 9/11 to Mad Cow Disease and SARS, have hit passenger numbers. A huge blaze engulfed a freight shuttle in 1996, closing the tunnel for weeks and fuelling public doubts over safety.

But for all its problems, the opening of the tunnel in 1994 was a landmark for Kent, Britain and France.

There is no doubt that the Channel Tunnel has transformed both the landscape and economy of Kent.

Business links have been forged and there is now far more cross-Channel commerce than before 1994.

Cultural and educational ties have strengthened too. Schools in Kent, Medway and Nord-Pas de Calais pay regular visits to each other's areas.

To some extent, all these things happened before the coming of the tunnel. After all, there were plenty of ferry and hovercraft services we were able to use. But things have accelerated since it opened.

The Chunnel has also put Kent on the international map. It has proved a unique selling point for officials promoting the county as a great place to do business.

The European dimension has helped Locate in Kent, the inward investment agency, persuade companies to set up in the county rather than North of London.

The tunnel marked the end of more than a century of talks about the need or otherwise for a tunnel.

Several tunnels were started and aborted over the years, but Prime Minister Margaret

Thatcher, who herself took office for the first time 25 years ago, overcame her Euroscepticism to approve the Channel Tunnel, paving the way for the Treaty of Canterbury in 1986.

Sir Alastair Morton as chief executive gave the project a controversial edge and gave it the drive it needed in the face of widespread scepticism from media, public and protesters who wanted Britain to remain an island.

The projected number of passengers using Eurostar has been well below expectations, although there has been an encouraging rise since the opening of section one of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link through Kent.

Eurostar got its marketing woefully wrong in the early days and lost the loyalty of passengers it might have gained. In particular, there was little price incentive for Kent passengers who wanted to pop to Paris for the day to use Eurostar.

These lower-than-expected numbers have dented Eurotunnel's revenue. That was why the previous board created Project Galaxie.

Former chief executive Richard Shirrefs, who was based at Cheriton and lives in Canterbury, believed that financial restructuring would lower access charges, enable Eurostar and freight operators to slash fares and tariffs, and boost trade.

That is especially important for Eurotunnel as it faces up to the loss of the guaranteed minimum user charge by November 2006.

When the Channel Tunnel Rail Link is fully open in 2007, bringing with it much faster domestic services, Eurostar passenger numbers should rise anyway- but possibly not by enough to substantially dent the debt.

But unless Governments bail out the project - and that is ruled out by the Treaty of Canterbury - there is no end in sight to the debt mountain overshadowing one of the world's most significant engineering and transport projects.

Sir Alastair Morton said in 1994: "It is done, and we who were there at the doing of it - in the engineering offices, on the sites, under the sea, among the bankers worldwide and in the ministries of both countries - can look back and wonder that it got done."