Researched in collaboration with teams from across Europe, the report highlights both that ‘subterranean politics’ - the various protests, initiatives and actions normally considered marginal - are now striking a chord in the mainstream, and that these protests have been misframed as a reaction to austerity, overlooking a deeper, more insidious crisis of the political system. It also finds that among subterranean actors Europe is rarely discussed, despite the current proliferation of top-down initiatives for reforming the European Union, and makes tentative suggestions as to how Europe might be brought back into public debate.

Mary Kaldor is Professor of Global Governance and Director of the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit at the London School of Economics. She is the author of many books, including The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon: Human Security and the Changing Rules of war and Peace, New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era and Global Civil Society: An Answer to War. Professor Kaldor was a founding member of European Nuclear Disarmament and of the Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly. She is also convenor of the Human Security Study Group, which reported to Javier Solana

Mike Richmond is a writer and part of the editorial team of The Occupied Times of London newspaper. Published last year, his debut novel, Sisyphusa, was recommended by Deborah Orr in The Guardian and has been praised by Clare Allan, Professor Raymond Tallis, Simon Brett and Michele Hanson, among others. He lives in London.

Susi Dennison has been a policy fellow with ECFR since 2010. She writes and comments on human rights and democracy in the EU’s external relations and political transitions in North Africa, and this year will co-author ECFR’s European Foreign Policy Scorecard 2013.