In Search of European Alternatives: Anti-Austerity Protests in Europe

Abstract

Europe has been an object of constant scrutiny and criticism since the beginning of the economic crisis of 2008, and more so with the explosion of the sovereign debt crisis in 2010. Recurrent news media expressions such as ‘euro-crisis’ have popularised the idea that there is something irremediably wrong in the project of the European Union (EU), which threatens its very existence as a political entity. The economic crisis — turned by austerity policies into a long and deep depression of Europe’s periphery — has shown the rising power and increasing lack of legitimacy of the current technocratic institutions of the EU, including the European Council, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission. Yet, the protest movements which have developed in the old continent in response to the crisis, and in particular the ‘subterranean politics’ of the Indignados and Occupy groups, have shown little interest in a transformation of European governance structures and policies. Anti-austerity protests have largely developed at a national level with limited transnational coordination and vision. While rightly criticising neo-liberal policies pursued at the European level, protests have mostly ended up seeing Europe only as the culprit and not also as the space where a political alternative to neo-liberalism could be developed.