We are on our way to the interview with Toon Streppel, former head of the European Parliament Information office in Bulgaria. Streppel is waiting for us at the corner of the street in central Sofia.

"I wasn’t sure you would be able to find it," he says as we climb the stairs to a modest apartment Streppel and his wife Barbara Couwenbergh have rented since his retirement. Temporary, they hasten to add, while they wrap up business in Bulgaria, or rather prepare new plans and projects, because neither is looking to settle down for a quiet retirement.

"First, we are going to renovate our home in Luxembourg. We have not done anything about that house for years, because we were away; first three years in Warsaw and then three years in Sofia," Streppel says.

Then there is a myriad of other plans for the years to come.

Beginnings and endings

"Sofia was my last position," Streppel says.

Now that a successor at the Information office has been appointed and Streppel is retired, the professional chapter in Bulgaria has closed, but not the personal chapter.
"Even when we arrived," Streppel says, "on our first day in Sofia, Barbara called a couple she had been friends with in The Hague." The couple had worked for the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry and had, after 12 years in The Netherlands, been called back to Bulgaria. "They said: ‘how wonderful, are you here for holidays?’ So we started with friends," Streppel says.

A journalism graduate, Streppel also pursued Scandinavian studies because he wanted to become a foreign correspondent in northern Europe, and holds an MBA. His education and his work had always been directed at Western and Northern Europe.

Four offices

European Parliament Information offices have been in capital or government cities in all European Union countries since the early 1980s. Streppel has set up four such offices.
At first, the European Parliament Information offices were based on languages, so the German-language office was in Luxembourg, while the Dutch-language office was in Brussels. "In 1979 or 1980, Germany asked if it was not possible to do this from Bonn," Streppel says.
As a consequence, the Bonn office was opened, but that meant an office in The Hague had to be opened as well. Streppel was asked to set up the office in The Hague and stayed there for about eight years.

After a brief spell in Luxembourg, he was asked to set up the European Parliament Information office in Helsinki when Finland joined the European Union in 1995. Streppel stayed for two years in Helsinki. "This was a wonderful experience for me, because I speak Swedish, which is the second official language, even though only a small minority of six per cent speaks Swedish," Streppel says. "In parliament, for example, Swedish-speaking members of parliament would speak Swedish, without interpreters. So all MPs have to understand both languages," he says.

Heading east

Back in Luxembourg, with the date for the accession of 10, mostly Eastern European countries, to the bloc nearing, and after six years in general management, Streppel asked to return to information services and be assigned to the setting up of one of the information offices in one of the new member states. With 25 years’ experience in that position, he was assigned the largest of the countries - Poland.

A three-year spell in Poland made them fall in love with Krakow - "one of the most beautiful cities in Europe," Streppel says.
That was the first experience with Eastern Europe for Streppel.

After Poland, with the Bulgarian and Romanian accession nearing, but also only a few years away from his retirement, Streppel was asked if he would like to end his career in Sofia. "We did not hesitate and accepted right away," Streppel says.

Asked to compare the two countries, Streppel says "Bulgaria is really far to the east and really far south, compared to Poland."

"Poland had a big advantage; it reacted to the changes in Eastern Europe much quicker than Bulgaria and Romania did. That disadvantage [of Bulgaria and Romania] is hard to overcome," he says.

"Poland has always managed to maintain their Catholic Church structures, which allowed them to do a lot outside the state structures. And they have always managed to put off agricultural collectivisation. So they considered themselves different from other Eastern bloc countries. I believe they managed to build an advantage that they are now reaping the benefits from," Streppel says.

According to him, the Polish now have close to a Western European mentality. "If you drive around in Poland, you don’t feel as far from home as you do in Bulgaria," Streppel says.

The one exception to this is the Polish attitude towards the Ukraine, which it considers its brother.

"The president of the European Parliament came to Poland and wanted to have a public debate. His staff suggested a discussion about Turkish EU accession. I told them that was not a lively topic in Poland, that they only wanted to talk about the Ukraine in the context of EU expansion," Streppel says.

That advice was waived.

"The president of parliament did his introduction speech and said to the audience ‘I would like to give the floor to you now’, at which point a professor in the audience stood up and said ‘we know the Turks, they once were our neighbours, but what about the Ukraine?’," Streppel says.