Already two weeks ago the ECPM together with the Finnish Christian Democrats (FKD) organized a conference for the North-Eastern countries of Europe. The theme was "Faith and Christian-democracy". We were welcomed in Helsinki by Peter Östman (Vice-chairman) and Sari Essayah (Secretary-general) of the FKD on Friday night, and had some diverse lectures.

The first lecture was given by Peter Östman himself about the development of Christian-democracy in the Scandinavian countries. After his lectures one delegate of the Belarusian Christian-democrats, Alex Shein spoke about the opportunities and struggles in politics and society of Belarus. There was also a speaker of the women movement of the FKD: Saara Ruokonen. She spoke about the achievements and challenges ahead of the women movement.

The second day started already early in the morning. A delegate of the ChristianUnion and member of the Dutch senate, Roel Kuiper, spoke about how faith and religion can go together with politics. In his lecture, Kuiper discussed the ideas of Abraham Kuyper and especially about the idea of "sphere sovereignty." After this interesting lecture we had a discussion and proceeded with the workshop session. The youth had a workshop about the alcohol problem among the youth of various countries and specifically in Finland. This workshop was organized by Jonathan van Tongeren, the Secretary-general of the youth movement of the ECPM: ECPYN. They discussed the possible campaigning against alcohol and brainstormed about other opportunities.

The other participants of the conference had a workshop given by Peter Östman and Roel Kuiper. During this workshop, both speakers mainly elaborated about issues they had already mentioned in their speeches. Many questions where about how to implement these ideas in different contexts, whereas the situation in Belarus is of course very different from the one in Finland After this the conference was over, and we were invited to join the members of the FKD in order to celebrate their 50^th anniversary.

The pictures of the conference are on our website, and the documents and PPT slides of the speakers will be published online as soon as possible. Further readings can be found in our virtual library.

The secretariat of the ECPM looks forward to meeting you again in Brussels during our 4^th annual Congress on the coming 11^th of June.

In Christ,

Guido van Beusekom (Secretary-general ECPM)

Anne-Marije Staat (Co-worker ECPM)