Slow changes

Changes in Bulgaria happen slower than in Poland for a number of reasons, Streppel says. "For one, they had this disadvantage that I already mentioned," he says. "Secondly, they are still, consciously or subconsciously, extremely interested in what is happening to the east."
And it doesn’t really help that structures of political parties are not very stable. "As soon as you have two people within a party who disagree, they start a new party. It was the same in Poland. With elections it is always the new party and the opposition that win, the ruling party loses. With the next elections, it is the same thing; a new party gets the benefit of the doubt and the opposition - which before was the ruling party - becomes a ruling party again," Streppel says. "In Poland this is already a lot less so and in Bulgaria it will become less as well," he says.

"A political party has to be clear where it stands ideologically, both nationally and European, and it should draw conclusions from its relationships with other parties and larger groups that it belongs to. There was a major incident in the run-up to the 2007 elections, when the European liberal fraction had organised a large-scale two-day conference in Sofia, which they cancelled one day before the start, because the two local parties that were represented in the fraction, were involved in a major row between them," Streppel says.

"If we look at political parties here in Bulgaria, there is a large group of registered parties that is part of the European Christian Democrats, a smaller group is part of the Socialists and several others of the Liberals. You can have your differences, but you should be more or less on the same line when you are within one such structure, something that was not always the case in Bulgaria," he says.

"GERB [the Bulgarian abbreviation for Prime Minster Boiko Borissov’s Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria - RB] has said that they weren’t sure yet whether they were British conservatives or European Christian Democrats," Streppel says.

Streppel sees it as a good sign that two members of the European Parliament are ministers in the new government. "They look at national governments with a different view," he says.

"One of my favourite examples in this is former agriculture minister Gerrit Braks [agriculture minister in The Netherlands from 1980 to 1990, who had not been an MEP before he became minister - RB]. One year he would return from Brussels and tell journalists ‘we have to catch fewer fish this year because Brussels has lowered the quotas.’  The next year he would say ‘I have good news, I have achieved that we can catch more fish.’ In both cases it was a decision of the European agriculture ministers. When it was bad news, Brussels was to blame, when it was good news, he had achieved it. But this is true everywhere," Streppel says.

Streppel believes it will take about a generation for the 12 Eastern and Southern European countries that were the last to join the bloc, to reach Western European levels. "Estland,  for example, has been under the protection of Finland and things are going really well there now. But things cannot realistically go faster than in Eastern Germany, for example. It is still not the same as Western Germany. And that is within one country, with a lot more money and exchange than with the 12 Eastern European countries," Streppel says.

"I think Bulgaria has more problems adapting to the EU, because, as part of the last two countries to join, purely mathematically, they have less input," he says.
"They are welcome, but have to follows traditions in Europe, which is what Bulgaria is not used to. When Brussels tells them something is not good, they respond by saying that they can do it themselves. When funds are frozen, the Bulgarian reaction is that the money can come out of the state Budget. And that, of course, is not the intention," Streppel says.

"That is a mentality problem, I think, a certain pride," he says.

New beginning

Plans for the couple’s retirement are plentiful. Besides the renovation of the house and Streppel’s desire to learn to play the saxophone, he is also planning to reconnect to the ideals of his study years. "Now, after my pension, I want to translate Swedish literature," Streppel says.

"I do have an idea of what book I would like to translate, but I still have to find a publishing house and so on."

Streppel’s first choice is a book by a contemporary Swedish writer, his first novel after 15 years. It is a story about a ship’s doctor who travels around the world with Captain Cook and has studied with Carl Linnaeus, who used to teach in The Netherlands at the university of Harderwijk.

The couple has been actively involved in organising exhibitions in both The Hague and Luxembourg. After the summer, a group exhibition of Bulgarian artists is scheduled in Luxembourg. For the closing event of the exhibition,"Bulgarian ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg, Hristo Georgiev, will come from Brussels," Couwenbergh says.

Their stay in Bulgaria has made the couple enthusiastic about folk dancing and folk art, something long lost in The Netherlands. "Poland and Bulgaria should ensure this art form survives," Streppel says.

"New member states are often afraid they will lose cultural identity. But the opposite is true; in confrontation with other cultures, one’s culture comes out," he says.

"It was the confrontation with other cultures that made Luxembourg recognise Luxembourgish as a national language only in 1984," Streppel says.


* The term Quartermaster was first used in Germany as Quartiermeister and it initially was a court official whose duty it was to prepare the monarch’s sleeping quarters. Later, the term took on different meanings in different countries and different military organisations. From the 17th century on, it was used in the sense of organising supplies.