Mobilising around Europe: pro and anti-EU social movement activism

Abstract

The European Union has recently faced various (existential) crises. The Eurozone and migrant crises, as well as Brexit have raised questions about the EU’s ability to maintain cohesion in the face of rising nationalist and populist challenges across Europe (see Pirro et al. 2018). Mainstream politicians supporting further integration can no longer rely on a ‘permissive consensus’ among European citizens (Hooghe and Marks 2009; 2018). In addition, populist parties, which claim to speak for the ‘ordinary people’ and lament the unresponsiveness or corruption of the (political) elites, have gained increasing popular support. They are typically characterised by a Eurosceptic agenda, and criticise the undemocratic and complex nature of EU decision-making. Yet, public contestation around immigration and European integration not only happens at the domestic party-political level. Indeed, recent research has also focused on ‘the far right as social movement’ (Gattinara and Pirro 2018), bringing attention to the societal roots and activist elements of nativist, and also Eurosceptic, politics. Nevertheless, the populist interpretation of European integration as an issue that divides ‘the people’, on the one hand, and ‘the elites’ on the other, deserves serious qualification. In almost all countries, populist party supporters represent only a minority of the electorate, and the majority of citizens in Europe remain supportive of their country’s EU membership. What is more, across Europe, a considerable number of citizens have come out to defend the EU more explicitly. The Pulse of Europe and the UK anti-Brexit movement are cases in point. Our panel brings together contributions on both pro- and anti-EU social movement mobilisation in several European countries. It seeks to address the questions of: when citizens mobilise against or in defence of the EU, what do they argue, what strategies and language do they employ, and how effective is their activism? And how have civil society organisations at the EU level responded to the alleged populist Eurosceptic turn in Europe? Further, is there scope for transnational mobilisation and networks?

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