On February 27, 1997, the president of the ailing French firm Renault announced the imminent closure of the company's plant in Vilvorde, Belgium. Closing Vilvorde was but a prelude to politically more risky cuts, because the French state is Renault's largest shareholder, and an election was coming up in France. But the mainly Flemish and heavily unionized Vilvorde workforce would not go quietly. Workers occupied the plant and began a series of public protests that would make Vilvorde synonymous with a new term in the European political lexicon: the “Eurostrike.” Vilvorde brought together Belgian, French, and Spanish workers; officials of France, Belgium, and the European Union; and the courts of both countries in a structure of multiple alignment and contention that was dramatized by the actions of the EU as well as the French and the Belgian Press and culminated in a mass demonstration before the EU's headquarters.

Many aspects of the strike were interesting, but for our purposes it will serve to illustrate this chapter's three central messages: first, that Europeanization is not occurring only at the summit – on which most of the research has been centered – but also at the grassroots of European society; second, that social actors at that level are learning to utilize Europe's variable political geometry and – though they lack the resources of the rich and powerful lobbies in Brussels – are developing a repertoire of contention to put forward their claims; third, and most central to our discussion, both contention and alignment are crossing Europe's center–periphery axes in a variety of ways.