nEUrosis

Stressbourg

April 29th, 2007 by Pim de Kuijer

Welcome to hell. If you had read your Bible correctly you would have known it is damnation without reprieve, so don’t be surprised if you have to come back month after month after month. Strasbourg, or Stressburg as it is known to the assistants in the European Parliament, is an official seat of the Parliament. Below you find a short description of what it is like to join Europes’s biggest travelling circus.

Hogwarts Express

Hundreds of red-eyed assistants find themselves each month on a very early Monday morning on a platform of the Luxembourg station in Brussels. Whereas most Members of Parliament fly to Strasbourg, their assistants are forced to cram into this Hogwarts Express to hell. Watching grown-ups fight over the few available seats, including pulling and punching, is not a rare sight on the five hour journey to Strasbourg. Cigarette-deprived individuals smoke like posessed during the five minute stop the train makes in Luxembourg. Some never make it back on the train. And of course everyone has the journey home to look forward to.

Under the bridge, second lamppost to the right

But before the exhausted assistants get to go back to Brussels, they first have a couple of grueling days ahead of them. It starts by finding a place to stay. Joseph and Mary had an easier time in Bethlehem than assistants do in Strasbourg. Since all hotels are booked up years in advance for the sessions of Parliament, assistants have to search for days and call many hotels before something opens up. Sleeping in ‘ botels’ (I am sorry sir, you can’t check in yet because your hotel is still on cruise - happened to me), the Foreign Legion or in sleezy hotels which rent rooms for the hour is sometimes all that is left to the assistants. Stories of five assistants to one room, also to save money, or people sleeping in cars can be overheard in the Parliament.

Stressbourg

Stressbourg, is what many assistants call the official seat of Parliament. A very small office, one computer for sometimes up to three people and the fact that most of the voting of Parliament actually takes place in Strasbourg makes stress a permanently present phenomenon. Working days can end anywhere between 21:00 and 24:00 and then you go eat, with your colleagues, and sleep (if you have a hotel) with, or at least in the same hotel as, your colleagues. That is to say, you are surrounded by your colleagues and your boss 24/7. A recipe for disaster.

Always look on the bright side

Is there nothing good to report on Strasbourg? Of course there is. All the interesting debates take place there. In the meetings of the political groups Romanians will explain the dismissal of their President, Polish MEPs expand on the political situation in their home country. If Angela Merkel does not show her face then it is the Indian President who delivers a speech. Stress is accompanied by adrenaline and you, your boss and your colleagues are all in it together, which creates mutual sympathy akin perhaps to the Stockholm syndrom of hostages and hostage takers.

One seat

But as assistant I cannot but support the call for One Seat for the European Parliament. The travelling circus costs around 200 million Euro a year. The pollution it creates on a yearly basis is said to be equal to 13.000 flights between Europe and New York. Apart from all these practical reasons, I beg of you to consider the humanitarian side. Please stop the abuse of poor assistants. Please support the action for one seat of the European Parliament. Our well-being depends on it.

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