"The European Citizen" is one year old today!

In some ways it's hard to believe it (and in other ways not so hard), but The European Citizen blog has been up and running for a year now today. Blogging has been very new to me, and, particularly being an old technophobe at heart, there's been a bit of a learning curve. But blogging has been a great experience, perhaps added to by the growth of the Euroblogosphere over the last year - there are now over 500 blogs on Bloggingportal.eu! Looking back, it's been a busy year blogging-wise (as well as offline): blogging has turned out to be a lot more active than I thought it would be. What I thought would be an occasional article has turned into 238 articles, and has seen me get involved in several projects.

A lot of the year was taken up looking at the Lisbon Treaty, and a few sideways glances at the strange creature that was Libertas. Stalled ideas came in the shape of a small German-language blog and a small mini-series (which I'll have to get back to at some point). One of the big events last year was the European elections - which I tried to cover, with some interviewing of the NI candidates and a piece on the NI constituency, and also trying my hand at a bit of post-election analysis. Covering the European election, despite the lack-luster campaign, proved to be too big to give a quick overview of every member state, but I've just under 5 years to prepare for the next one, so I'll try to build on it for next time.

Politically, the right won again, and the left fell into disaray - perhaps enough to be called a "lame duck opposition".

August and September saw me get more involved in different projects, with Bloggers for Europe and Th!nk About It, as well as co-founding "Chasing Brussels", a new EU politics podcast. The launch event of Th!nk2 in Copenhagen was a great experience, where I got to meet lots of bloggers (both experienced and just starting out), including some Eurobloggers. Th!nk2 also led me to interview an MEP, and stand in on a Christmas Lecture debate on nuclear power. (Th!nk3 is open for registration if you're interested in signing up).

There was also the standard (Euro)blogger's criticism of the mainstream media.

I've also taken part in some Euroblogging community building (very much on the participation rather than organising side of things), with the Euroblogger meet-up, and joining Bloggingportal.eu as a volunteer editor.

Given the growth of the Euroblogosphere, and the sheer amount of issues that will face the EU over the next while, I'm sure that there'll be a lot to look out for this year - and I'd encourage others to join in and set up their own blogs.

In the future I hope to add a bit more on party politics, though the blog will mainly stay the same. Given that it's my final year for my degree (final semester now!), the blogging rate will probably stay the same as it was in autumn (I don't think I'll be writing 35 posts in a month for a while!).

I hope you've enjoyed the first year of The European Citizen!