Gen Z are leading the European protests. Here’s why they’re angry

The kids are not alright. Across Europe, young people are protesting issues ranging from a lack of funding for education to the cost of housing, posing massive challenges to governments already under pressure and providing a visible sign of the intergenerational frustration felt by Gen Z.

The precise configuration of these grievances is different in different countries. In Spain, the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal from her home served as the catalyst for this wave of protests; in France, it was students demonstrating in support of striking teachers; student protests have rocked Albania on and off for months, first sparked by plans for a luxury development backed by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Despite their different catalysts, however, all these movements have acted as a sort of black hole, drawing in any discontent before exploding in a catch-all outburst of frustration for a generation of young people who fear they won’t have the same opportunities as their parents. They have, in part, inspired each other, too. Protesters in Italy and Greece have referenced their French counterparts in their slogans. Housing protests in Spain spilled over into Portugal. And student unions across Europe are sharing advice and their experiences with one another, Alice de Brito, vice president of France’s main student union, UNEF, told CNN.

Protests in France spiraled into rioting and violence last weekend.

Carl Court/Getty Images

“I see so many more similarities than differences,” she said. “We are all talking about the need for investments in education, in the universities, in youth in general. But we are also talking about the cost of living, about housing.”

That echoes the demands made by Italian student union leader Sabrina Brizzola, who told a rally last weekend: “Let’s… make ourselves heard for schools that don’t collapse on our heads, for safe and dignified work, for public healthcare, for social justice.”

For Julius Fintelmann, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the European Correspondent daily newsletter, the protests “reflect a kind of frustration, the feeling that Europe’s politics is failing to deliver for the next generation.”

Anti-riot police clashed with demonstrators in Milan last weekend.

Piero Cruciatti/AFP/Getty Images

As well as education and housing, he points to an increasingly uncertain job market, where artificial intelligence disproportionately affects entry-level jobs, and the climate crisis as laying the groundwork for this explosion of Gen Z anger. “I think fundamentally what we see is this promise that liberal democracy had, which was that the next generation will enjoy a better life than the current one, that promise simply doesn’t hold true anymore,” he told CNN.

And the European Union countries most affected by protests – Greece, Italy, France, Belgium, Spain and Portugal – share a gloomy economic backdrop and high levels of national debt, making it hard to increase public spending. Bond yields in France, for example, ticked up to their highest levels since 2002 on Wednesday, exerting more pressure on government budgets.

“Waiting for an answer”

Student protests like this have been held at the start of the French school year in September and October for the past nine years as young people returning to education realize they don’t have enough teachers or good equipment, noted de Brito.

This year, however, they snowballed, as students demanded reduced class sizes, increased spending on teachers, investment in infrastructure to withstand the climate crisis and an end to police violence against young people. “People are just tired of waiting for an answer,” de Brito said.

Protesters took part in a rally organized by teachers and students demanding improvements to education and measures to address the rising cost of living in Athens, Greece on Wednesday.

Petros Giannakouris/AP

Education is a theme that cuts across Europe’s borders. Thousands of students and teachers marched across Greece, including a group who gathered outside parliament in Athens chanting, “from Greece to France, we want public, free 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 France,” Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara said earlier this month, repeating a far-right claim that the French protests are fueled by the difficulty, absent in Italy, of integrating second-generation migrants into the school system.

Protesters set trash cans on fire during clashes with police following a demonstration over Spain’s housing crisis at the beginning of October.

Emilio Morenatti/AP

Nonetheless, housing is another issue that cuts across national borders. Italian protesters say they have closely watched housing protests in Spain, which erupted in earnest in September and ultimately forced the government to call snap elections.

Students at a protest camp in Rome told CNN that affordable housing was inseparable from a good education. One, Elisa Pastore, said she and her brother can “barely” afford the rent for their shared room in Rome, where they attend university. For the first half of her degree, until her brother started university too, she had to commute 120 kilometers (75 miles) from outside Rome in order to save money.

Other groups are protesting, too. A blockade by truckers in Italy, outraged by the rising cost of fuel following the Iran war, has halted production of buffalo mozzarella and some pasta. And issues like housing transcend generational divides, drawing older generations into the protests as well.

A protester holding a banner reading “we are governed by clowns” lies on the ground during a protest against skyrocketing housing costs at Rossio Square in Lisbon on Thursday.

Patricia de Melo Moriera/AFP/Getty Images

In Portugal, thousands of people have gathered in Rossio Square, one of Lisbon’s busiest plazas, every evening this week. Some even pitched tents and 55 people were arrested in the early hours of Tuesday morning, prompting further demonstrations. Protesters, waving flags with slogans like “Casas para morar,” meaning “Homes to live in,” have demanded caps on rent hikes and the reversal of a new law that would make evictions easier.

Elsewhere, long-running demonstrations in Albania and Serbia have focused more on anti-corruption, spiraling into movements seeking to topple each country’s government.

After the protests in Albania turned violent last week, Prime Minister Edi Rama resisted any calls to step down, instead accusing protesters of threatening his plans for the country to join the EU and blaming his political opponents for the unrest.

“We want a change, that’s why we’re here,” one protester in Albania told Reuters. “We want a revolution, we want a new government, we are not looking for any negotiations, we need a new government as soon as possible.”

Protesters clashed with the police during an anti-government demonstration outside the prime minister’s office in Tirana, Albania on Saturday.

Hameraldi Agolli/AP

Meanwhile in Serbia, the student-led protests that have shaped the country’s politics for the past two years now form the most formidable opposition to longtime leader Aleksandar Vucic in parliamentary elections on Sunday.

More demonstrations are likely to come. Two of France’s biggest trade unions have called for further protests in Paris on Saturday, though French President Emmanuel Macron has moved to ban “illegitimate” protests, meaning only those linked to trade unions will be allowed by authorities. Nonetheless, widespread demonstrations are expected in Orléans, where hard-right figurehead Marine Le Pen launches her presidential campaign this weekend.

Major trade unions in France and Spain have called for a general strike on November 5 and 11, respectively. In Germany, a group calling itself “Gen Z regelt” (“Gen Z’s 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 the rising cost of education.

CNN’s Stefano Pozzebon, Pierre Bairin, Lucie Lepellec and Will Ripley contributed reporting.

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