Intensive Summer Course 2026 Intensive Summer Course on Economic and Monetary Union & Defence Salzburg, 6.-10. July 2026 Escalating geopolitical tensions and renewed security threats have compelled…

In the context of the seminar Challenges of European Integration we are privileged to welcome the following distinguished guest speaker at EDMUNDSBURG l Europasaal (HS 240) l Mönchsberg 2 | 5020…

Welcome to Next Generation SCEUS, the podcast where we make the European Union a little less confusing and a lot more fun for (E)U! From quirky laws to the latest political drama, we dive into the…

Wenn Regierungen in EU-Mitgliedstaaten unabhängige Gerichte schwächen, die Medien unter Kontrolle bringen und faire Wahlen erschweren – wie kann Europa reagieren? Der Vortrag beleuchtet, warum…

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Die Welt von gestern kommt nicht mehr. Europa droht im neuen Zeitalter der Machtpolitik zwischen den USA, Russland und China aufgerieben zu werden. Während uns die Pandemie außenwirtschaftliche…

The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) is among the EU’s most ambitious initiatives, addressing COVID-19’s economic fallout and fostering resilience. Research has examined its design and adopti...

VARICRIS research project

Social movement scholarship has emphasized that progressive ‘Europeanization from below’ may be a breeding ground for major EU reform and democratization. Empirically, however, activists have found it difficult to make gains when targeting the EU. To understand the challenges that activists face in the context of transnational EU mobilization, our article draws from agency-oriented approaches in social movement studies to propose an ‘EU mobilization package’, comprising three recurring strategic dilemmas that activists encounter: (a) the formulation of goals that both address the transnational level and appeal to national or local constituencies, (b) the building of a transnational political organization that is both inclusive and effective, and (c) whether and how to interact with EU institutions, particularly in the context of European Parliament elections. We apply this framework to the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), an organization founded by Yanis Varoufakis in 2016, which is a key example of social movement dissensus to EU politics. Methodologically, we rely on comprehensive interview data, the analysis of a large corpus of DiEM25 online and offline publications, and participant observation of three public events. A discussion of the group’s strategic challenges provides important general lessons for our understanding of social movement mobilization targeting EU politics as well as transnational activism.