Yes, this blog entry is about one seat, but not that of European Parliament. And yes, it is about EP’s monthly commuting to Strasbourg, but in a slightly different perspective

Car seat by jules:g

The idea of this entry was born when I was driving (first time ever and for good reasons – I’ve always taken a train before) those 430 km from Brussels to Strasbourg, to join 6 other colleagues of the web communication unit . After asking around a few colleagues and MEP assistants and resisting the temptation of sending “a spam message” on free seats to Strasbourg, I hit the road the next morning.

The trip came just one day after coming back from leave, so there was not much time to find co-passengers, with all the catching up for the website and other tasks to do.

Unethical single seat

The drive on a sunny Tuesday was great, and with a little help from Augie March and Travis music I have done it. And even though I was driving an environmentally friendly LPG car with 1.2 engine and new tyres , I wasn’t feeling the greenest driver on Earth with all those empty seats around me. Will there ever be a centralised car- sharing scheme for EP missions, so no seats are wasted in vain?

Europe behind the wheel

Look at mine – a French car assembled in Turkey, bought in Lithuania with the money borrowed from a Swedish bank, assured with a Latvian company and converted with Italian LPG equipment.

When travelling through Belgium, Luxembourg, France you can really see the benefits of borderless Europe and the power of European funds used to improve the infrastructure.

Usually your car is a real European too. Look at mine – a French car assembled in Turkey, bought in Lithuania with the money borrowed from a Swedish bank, assured with a Latvian company and converted with Italian LPG equipment. I am not going any deeper that that :)

Two speed Europe: traffic offenses

Alas, there’s not enough Europe yet. Why? By trying to get to work as quickly as possible I was probably flashed speeding while passing Luxembourg. As there’s still no efficient data exchange on transnational traffic offenses, will I be immune to justice just because my car has Lithuanian licence plates?

Luckily, the situation will soon change, as a future directive on a cross-border road safety will ensure that foreign drivers caught speeding are not more equal than the locals. It will include speeding, drink-driving, not wearing a seat belt and failing to stop at a red light. Road hooligans beware!

More standardisation needed

During the trip I skipped cheap, but crowded filling stations in Luxembourg, but when I tried to fill up my LPG tank in France I was hit by a harsh reality – event though I would be able to fill it up in UK or Italy and have a Belgian adaptor, it does not help in France. How long will we wait until we have a single European standard on LPG fillers, chargers and other handy things?

More Europe and less empty seats, that’s what a European traveller needs. And yes, I already have a fellow-traveller for coming back, and a bicycle for getting to work in Brussels, but no French LPG adaptor yet  :(