If everything goes according to plan, the tin trunk - big enough to contain a corpse - will carry the Euro-MP's papers from Brussels to Strasbourg in time to arrive before him.
The exercise of moving the entire caravan of 626 MEPs (members of the European parliament) between the two cities for a week per month of plenary sessions in Strasbourg costs, with luck, only two days' work - half of two Fridays packing up the trunk, and half of two Mondays unpacking it.
Frustrating chores like this keep the European Parliament (EP) - and its armies of translators and hangers-on - at the fringes of European decision-making. Strasbourg, with its under-used 1960s parliamentary hemicycle, its crooked half-timbered houses and quaint canals, is a pleasant enough backwater to spend a quarter of your working life in, but it takes you out of the mainstream.
That's not the only reason Europe's parliament still plays a marginal role. "There's no such thing as European public opinion, otherwise the EP would be much more effective," laments John Stevens, a British Conservative MEP.
With the single European currency he believes that will change - slowly but dramatically.