Last chance to sign written declarations, last day to submit written parliamentary questions - the European Parliament election campaign will soon be fully underway. The final days of the European Parliament session is a time of mixed emotions, with many MEPs retiring, and others facing electoral challenge. Some MEP candidates still do not know their position on their party list - for instance, the Greek and the Bulgarian Socialists will not know about the composition of their list before 12 May. Turnout counts!

However, it is certainly time to stick up for our much maligned European Union! We probably should not be surprised to discover that the elections are unlikely to turn on the European issues that impact on day to day life. Instead in most countries the elections will be fought on the standing of national or sub-national governments instead of the relationship with the EU.

The European Parliament has been criticised as impotent and irrelevant - "of course the European Parliament does not make the laws that now control practically every aspect of our lives" wrote one letter-writer to a Scottish broadsheet, The Scotsman. This is simply untrue. Every revision of the Treaties has seen an increase in the power of the European Parliament in relation to the other institutions. Today the European Parliament is firmly established as a co-legislator. The codecision procedure gives the same weight to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union on a wide range of areas (for example, transport, the environment and consumer protection). Two thirds of European laws are adopted jointly by the European Parliament and the Council.

Commission President Barroso acknowledged this week that a great deal of legislation adopted in the last five years "bears the European Parliament's stamp", listing areas such as climate change, energy security, security and freedom, and the internal market.   

The use of new media, the introduction of a Parliament TV channel and web streaming can all help make the Parliament more accessible to citizens. But we have to persuade people that the EU is relevant to their daily lives and not something removed and distant from them. There is work to be done here and in the new parliament session we must also return to the issue of having one seat for the European Parliament based in Brussels. Within a few weeks on 4 June 2009, voters will have a unique opportunity to go to polls along with 375 million fellow European voters to elect both the world’s only directly elected transnational and multilingual parliament, and the EU’s only directly elected institution. I hope they will do so. Turnout counts!