Due to the increasingly alarming financial situation, the governments of all European democracies have launched several appeals since 2008 by calling on opposition parties to cooperate for the nation’s sake. Parliamentary opposition has found itself facing a dilemma: a choice between the need to cooperate with the majority in order to overcome the crisis and the opportunity provided by a weakened government to stress its adversarial position even further and get into power in case of election. How have the opposition parties in EU member states behaved in this situation? Has the crisis increased the level of consensus in the European parliaments or has it in fact exacerbated the conflict? Is there any distinction between mainstream and radical parties in this context? Finally, has the increasing influence of the EU on the national decision-making (notably over economic policies) had an impact on the behaviour of the opposition parties? These are some of the questions we try to answer in the present panel, which invites junior and senior scholars to present their research on the topic from both a national and a comparative point of view.