Just like busses, you wait ages for some promising new EU-focussed bloggers, and then 81 turn up at once… (And, judging from their photos, they aren’t all youngsters, as I was expecting, and there are even some GIRLS! Shocking! Though once again there appears to be a definite under-representation of non-white faces among their number, which is a shame…)

At any rate, there certainly seems to be a fair amount of enthusiasm for this year’s EU elections on the interweb (see also the promising-looking EU Debate 2009 blog from Cafe Babel) – but will there be any in the real world? And what are these elections going to be all about anyway? Will the economy be on the mend by the summer? It’s doubtful. And in tough economic times, aspirations of working with people in other countries generally take a back seat to knee-jerk protectionism, as is currently being witnessed in the UK with the Lindsay Oil Refinery dispute (after all, there wasn’t so much outrage over the influx of Polish builders at the height of the property boom a couple of years back, was there?).

Convincing sceptical voters of the benefits of European co-operation can be tough even in the good times, so ready do people seem to be to believe the worst. In the bad?