If you're one of the 2,000, I'd like to thank you personally. 

For The Local, this is a landmark. For the past fourteen years it has been our ambition to focus wholeheartedly on serving the international communities across Europe. Now that these communities are helping to pay for The Local we are liberated like never before to do this.

What you've been telling us in your emails and through the articles you choose to read is that you want The Local to give you more help to face the practical challenges you face living abroad. But you also tell us that you want to understand more about these societies, to get under their skin. It's our mission to give you all of this.

Becoming a Member lets you get more involved: you can post comments under articles, join us at events and give us input on future articles. That's why we're calling this Membership, not subscriptions – for us, it's all about joining in. If you're a Member of one edition of The Local you get full access to all other editions. And as an added bonus, you'll see far fewer ads. 

For us, 2,000 Members is only the start. The advertising revenue that The Local still depends on is exceptionally volatile, particularly in an era in which tech giants like Google and Facebook are increasingly dominant. In the long term, we need many more of our 5 million monthly readers to become Members and help secure The Local's future.

I, my fellow founder Paul Rapacioli and dozens of talented colleagues have spent the past decade building The Local. I believe that our audience of mobile global citizens is more important to Europe than ever. If you agree with me, I hope you'll follow the lead of your 2,000 fellow readers and become a Member of The Local today.

Join The Local today from just €1.99