With 36 days, dear friends, until the European election, I would like to welcome you to our brand new website. With our Common Candidate for Commission President, Martin Schulz (www.martin-schulz.eu ), these European elections are very different. And I am very proud to say that with our new website things are also very different. For 6 months now, you, the PES family of party activists and volunteers, have, under the direction of our Member Partie, been working incredibly hard, all across Europe, to ‘knock the vote’ for Martin. You have put thousands of hours of volunteer work in and set up networks all across the continent to help us win these elections. This website is designed to highlight and register your great efforts.

Our political family is the only one that can genuinely combine cutting edge online campaign and real grassroots engagement. This website is an illustration of that. Our victory lies in us being able to mobilise our sympathisers to come to the polls next 22-25 May. In 2009 the average turnout for the European election was 43% but thanks to your great efforts, we are reaching into the heart of communities all across Europe, telling people face to face why Europe needs a new direction, and why their vote counts. With your help we can increase our turnout and make Europe start working for the people.

Please check out all our new features including specific pages dedicated to your Member Partyhttp://www.pes.eu/your_party and information on campaign events taking place close to youhttp://www.pes.eu/our_events . And we will of course let you know when Martin is coming to your country or region.

We will launch a special mobile app next week so that when you are out door-to-door canvassing, you can register all the contacts you make. We will even have a leaderboard on our ‘your party’ section so that the hardest working canvasser will be there for all to see!

My last word for now is this; thanks to the PES team we have this great new tool, but it can only really work with your help and dedication . So far, with your knock the vote’ efforts, you have made the PES proud. Now, for the next 5 weeks, let’s use pes.eu together to make Europe proud. Good luck to you all on the campaign trail. Talk to you soon, Sergei.