Since the awakening of the squares in 2011 the political atmosphere in the Spanish state has changed dramatically. “Frustration, despair and fear, instead of being channelled towards the far right, have gone towards the creation of opportunities to meet other people facing similar situations, support each other and resist.”

Hilary Wainwright reports from Thessaloniki on what happened when the state ordered Greece’s state broadcaster to shut down, and the situation now.

Major industrial and financial corporations are organised internationally; at the European level there is a possibility of establishing greater democratic control over their activities; a step back towards the nation state would be a move in the wrong direction.

A series of interviews with young activists shows signs of a movement that connects local everyday struggles to a global movement, and one that resists by creating alternatives in the present.

There is a need for a strong and coordinated European effort to decisively end the attack on welfare and democracy and to make alternatives a reality.

2011 witnessed the implementation of some of the most comprehensive undemocratic structural changes in the EU since the Lisbon Treaty. Alternative proposals for a progressive exit from the euro crisis are laid out here.

Every story needs a narrative, an explanation of why things happened the way they did. In such a narrative lie the answers of how to avoid/correct similar developments in the future and how to propagate positive ones.

Three years since the outbreak of the global financial crisis, the banks are back making mega-profits while the burden has clearly shifted to citizens and workers. However civil society action at European level could still make a difference in reining in the financial sector.

As Brussels bureaucrats and established political parties struggle to answer the current crisis caused by a faulty economic structure, right-wing nationalist parties have increasingly come to the fore in Europe, with Finland's recent election the last contribution to a worrying trend.

The Great Recession shows no clear signs of ending, but conservative solutions to it have already wrought great long-term social damage.

The Irish government announcement of a €34 billion Euro bailout, two years after the financial crisis first broke, is a reminder that little has been done to prevent it happening again just as the social costs are becoming ever more evident.