Overall situation

While the general outlook remains broadly unchanged, with the Troika still pushing for severe austerity and national governments continuing their acts of window-dressing, another important issue has become increasingly prominent: corruption. As we see major scandals in many European countries, corruption seems to be not only a national problem, but rather connected to the current crisis and the economic system. However, there are also positive developments: ongoing resistance spreads everywhere, not only on the national level, but also on the European one. In this context, many citizen’s movements are calling for a European week of action from 15 to 17 May. More information will follow soon, see the Blockupy [en] website.

European level

When the last European Summit took place in Brussels, thousands of activists took to the street. The D19-20 citizen’s alliance [nl] [fr] [de], a broad coalition of NGOs, trade unions, farmers, students and people of all ages blocked crossroads to protest against austerity policies and the planned EU-US trade agreement TTIP.
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Spain

Citizen’s collectives are making efforts to fight corruption in many ways, for example by creating citizen legal initiatives against bankers [es] or against the preference participations [es] scam.

The struggle against privatisation has also seen a success: a court recently decided to freeze the privatisation [es] of six hospitals in Madrid. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Afem doctor’s association, accompanied by widespread protests against the privatization process.

Another victory of civil disobedience, is the new occupation [es] of an empty building by families (owned by CaixaBank), organised by the citizen Platform of Affected by Evictions (PAH [es]), a citizen’s initiative that holds support from more than 80 per cent of Spanish society.