(WARSAW) - Centre-left parties in the 27-nation European parliament are planning a single, bloc-wide campaign for next year's elections to the EU chamber, Poland's Social Democrats announced on Tuesday.

"We will have joint slogans, the same programme and the same message," Social Democrat spokesman Tomasz Kalita told AFP.

The idea of having one European Union-wide campaign rather than a plethora of national platforms was the brainchild of the leadership of the Party of European Socialists (PSE).

The PSE is a federation of 217 lawmakers from 33 separate centre-left parties, among them Britain's Labour, France's Socialists and Germany's Social Democrats, and is led by Denmark's Poul Nyrup Rasmussen.

It is the second-largest grouping in the 785-member European Parliament, after the conservative European People's Party, which has 288 deputies.

"The joint programme and the campaign plans are to be approved at a meeting of PSE leaders in Madrid on December 1," Kalita said.

One of the goals of the Madrid meeting is to pick five European cities as the venues for high-profile PSE election rallies ahead of the June 2009 polls.

Kalita said his party hoped that the southern Polish city of Krakow would be among the five.

Europe's Green parties ran a joint campaign for the last elections to the European Parliament in 2004.

Text and Picture Copyright 2008 AFP. All other Copyright 2008 EUbusiness Ltd. All rights reserved. This material is intended solely for personal use. Any other reproduction, publication or redistribution of this material without the written agreement of the copyright owner is strictly forbidden and any breach of copyright will be considered actionable.