Abstract

This chapter compares the perceptions and reactions of social movements to the European Union before and after the financial crisis. Drawing on the authors’ respective research on the global justice movement, issue-specific movement campaigns and anti-austerity movements, the political opportunities of the EU are investigated. While before the financial crisis some movements engaged with the EU, even securing modest influence, while protest movements addressed the organisation as a target, after the crisis opportunities contracted. Movements moved back to the deeply local, territorially rooted arenas embodied in the camps of the Occupy and ‘Indignados’ movements, seeing Europe as essentially deaf to its citizens’ concerns.