The European elections will take place May 22-25, starting on Thursday with the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, followed by Ireland on Friday, Latvia, Malta, Slovakia, French Overseas Territories on Saturday (while the Czech Republic will vote on Friday and Saturday), and on Sunday Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia and Spain will vote.

There is only a few hours left to contact your candidates! So far, 122 candidates have signed the Free Software Pact.

The contact platform is there to help you contact candidates. Get in touch with them, whether by email, phone, mail, or direct contact, and ask them if they are planning to sign the Free Software Pact.

You can elaborate by explaining why Free Software is important to you and why you believe it should be protected by legislators. Software patent, interoperability, freedom, privacy,... are all important and valid arguments to be heard by the future Members of the European Parliament!

You can also use the 2009 documents Free Software - what is at stake and Free Software - The threats to have more ideas on how to explain the issue to your candidates. Don't hesitate to use them!

And of course, you can also sign the Free Software usage declaration in order to show you support for Free Software and tell politicians that you believe it is important that they protect and promote it.

The Pact is now available for download in Català and Galego. Many thanks to those who helped translate !

The Free Software usage declaration is a simple way to let candidates know Free Software matters to European citizens. It allows you to announce that you are a Free Software user and that you want Free Software to be promoted and protected by the legislators in Europe. It is now available on the Free Software Pact website for you to sign!

The more signatures we have, the more candidates are likely to sign the Free Software Pact! Please sign it and spread the word to your friends!

This usage declaration has been proposed since 2007 by the French initiative Candidats.fr and has been signed by over 18 000 persons! To check it out, see the Candidats.fr website.

The Pact is now available for download in the following languages:

• Spanish
• Esperanto

Thanks to everyone who helped translate!

We will also introduce translations of the website in new languages: Spanish, Italian and German are just in need of the last proofreading. Stay tuned!

We are happy to introduce a new video on the website, from Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation.

Thanks to layout changes, the website is now multilingual!