The children are not doing well. Across Europe, young people are protesting over issues ranging from a lack of funding for education to the cost of housing, posing huge challenges for already strained governments and a visible sign of the intergenerational frustration felt by Generation Z.
The precise configuration of these grievances varies from country to country. In Spain, the expulsion of Maricarmen Abascal, 87, from her home served as a catalyst for this wave of protests; in France, it was students who demonstrated in support of teachers on strike; Student protests have rocked Albania for months, first sparked by luxury development projects backed by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
However, despite their different catalysts, all of these movements have acted as a kind of black hole, drawing in any discontent before exploding into a burst of catch-all frustration for a generation of young people who fear not having the same opportunities as their parents. They also partly inspired each other. Protesters in Italy and Greece referenced their French counterparts in their slogans. Housing protests in Spain have spread to Portugal. And student unions across Europe are sharing advice and experiences, Alice de Brito, vice president of France’s main student union, UNEF, told CNN.
“I see so many more similarities than differences,” she said. “We all talk about the need to invest in education, in universities, in youth in general. But we also talk about the cost of living, of housing.”
This echoes demands made by Italian student union leader Sabrina Brizzola, who told a rally last weekend: “Let’s make ourselves heard for schools that do not collapse on our heads, for safe and dignified work, for public health care, for social justice.” »
For Julius Fintelmann, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the daily newsletter European Correspondent, the protests “reflect a kind of frustration, the feeling that European policy is failing to meet the expectations of the next generation.”
Aside from education and housing, he points to an increasingly uncertain job market, where artificial intelligence is disproportionately affecting entry-level jobs, and the climate crisis laying the groundwork for this explosion of Gen Z anger. “I think fundamentally what we’re seeing is this promise of liberal democracy, that the next generation will enjoy a better life than the current one, that promise is just no longer true,” he told CNN.
And the European Union countries hardest hit by the protests – Greece, Italy, France, Belgium, Spain and Portugal – share a sluggish economic backdrop and high levels of national debt, making it difficult to increase public spending. Bond yields in France, for example, hit their highest levels since 2002 on Wednesday, putting more pressure on public budgets.
Student protests like this have taken place at the French start of the school year in September and October for the past nine years, as young people returning to school realize they don’t have enough teachers or good equipment, de Brito noted.
This year, however, they snowballed, as students demanded reduced class sizes, increased spending on teachers, investments in infrastructure to resist the climate crisis, and an end to police violence against young people. “People are just tired of waiting for an answer,” de Brito said.
Education is a theme that goes beyond the borders of Europe. Thousands of students and teachers marched across Greece, including a group that gathered in front of Parliament in Athens chanting: “From Greece to France, we want free, public education,” according to Reuters. When students first occupied a high school in Rome on October 7, they wrote “like in France” in the first line of the statement defending their actions.
The Italian government has sought to downplay any similarities with the protest movement in France. “The situation in Italy is very different from that in France,” Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara said earlier this month, repeating a far-right claim that French protests are fueled by the difficulty, absent in Italy, of integrating second-generation migrants into the school system.
However, housing is another issue that transcends national borders. Italian protesters say they have closely followed housing protests in Spain, which erupted in earnest in September and ultimately forced the government to call early elections.
Students at a protest camp in Rome told CNN that affordable housing is inseparable from a good education. One of them, Elisa Pastore, said she and her brother could “barely” pay the rent on their shared room in the Italian capital, where they attend university. During the first half of her studies, before her brother also started college, she had to travel 120 kilometers (75 miles) from outside Rome in order to save money.
Other groups are also protesting. A blockade imposed by Italian truckers, outraged by rising fuel prices following the war in Iran, has halted the production of buffalo mozzarella and some pastas. And issues like housing cut across generational divides, drawing older generations into protests as well.
In Portugal, thousands of people gathered every evening this week in Rossio Square, one of the busiest squares in Lisbon. Some even set up tents and 55 people were arrested early Tuesday morning, sparking new protests. The protesters, waving flags with slogans like “Casas para morar,” meaning “Houses to live in,” demanded a cap on rent increases and the repeal of a new law that would make evictions easier.
Elsewhere, long-running protests in Albania and Serbia have focused more on fighting corruption, escalating into movements aimed at overthrowing each country’s government.
After protests in Albania turned violent last week, Prime Minister Edi Rama resisted any calls to resign, instead accusing protesters of threatening his plan for the country to join the EU and blaming his political opponents for the unrest.
“We want change, that’s why we are here,” one protester in Albania told Reuters. “We want a revolution, we want a new government, we are not looking to negotiate, we need a new government as quickly as possible.”
Meanwhile, in Serbia, the student protests that have shaped the country’s politics over the past two years now form the most formidable opposition to longtime leader Aleksandar Vucic in Sunday’s parliamentary elections.
A new wave of protests swept across France on Saturday, as tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in cities including Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Orléans and Bordeaux. Organized by France’s main student union UNEF, the march in Paris also brought together the CGT, one of the country’s largest unions, farmers, climate activists and the Yellow Vests, the movement that first emerged in 2018 during protests over fuel prices. Authorities have spent much of the week scrambling to prevent the kind of public unrest seen last weekend.
The main unions in France and Spain have called a general strike on November 5 and 11 respectively. In Germany, a group calling itself “Gen Z regelt” (“Generation Z got it”) has called for nationwide protests on October 31. And student unions in Britain and Italy are planning a day of action on November 20 to protest rising education costs.
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