European integration tends to be seen as a project pursued by political elites from above. A closer look at its history, however, shows that organised citizens have been actively engaged from the early beginnings. It reveals consumers boycotting hormone-raised beef, farmers taking to the streets in Brussels and fishers blocking the port of Calais. We know very little about their involvement and its impact, and about how their attitudes towards the European project have evolved.

‘Consumers on the March: Civic Activism and Political Representation in Europe, 1960s to 1990s’ focuses on one group in particular: the organised consumer movement. From the 190s, the European Community evolved from a project of common market and trade policy to one including consumer participation and protection. Increasingly, individual consumers became the new focus of European policymakers in an attempt to bolster their legitimacy. This change allowed the transnational network of consumer groups, organised in the European Bureau of Consumer Unions (BEUC), to enter the European political arena and become an influential actor.

This research project analyses the representative claims (Michael Saward) put forward by consumer organisations and the strategies by which they have sought to substantiate these claims and further what they conceived of as ‘the consumer interest’. It takes into account national and political differences between organisations and studies how within BEUC a consumer agenda was negotiated. ‘Consumers on the March’ focuses on the interaction with other actors in the field of European consumer policies and the global consumer movement as well. As such, it highlights the inextricable entanglement of regional, national and global governance in the second half of the twentieth century.