ABSTRACT
Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, for the first time in history, most of Europe is gathered under common institutions that are based on representative democracy and the rule of law. A shared democratic culture is beginning to emerge, in spite of the major differences that still exist, particularly between East and West and between the North and the South. While most direct political exchanges between actors from different countries take place within the national institutional arena, the main European public spheres tend to discuss issues in increasingly similar terms, as can be seen in the main European newspapers (Eder 2007). Since the beginning of the 2000s, the European Parliament has played an increasingly important role; political parties and trade unions have coordinated their European-level activities more and more closely; social forums have enabled direct communication between civil society actors; a protest movement emerged in the European economic crisis. The question of developing alternatives to neoliberal capitalism is discussed in the whole continent, although with different variations.
