Protestsupdated 34m ago2 min read
European Youth Protests Spread From Greece to Belgium Over Housing, Education, Cost Of Living
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Student-led protests sweep Europe from Greece to Belgium over education funding and housing. Autumn wave includes Albania, France, Portugal, Spain, with 177 protests across 12 countries.
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“its emerging social and political essence is working class and socialist, not bourgeois-democratic.”
NBC News“Listen to the protestersconvulsing the boulevards and piazzas of Europeand you will hear demands to fix underfunded classrooms andlower extortionate housing costs.”
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Autumn protests across Europe
Media in Europe took to the streets again this Saturday as demonstrations were planned from Greece to Belgium, including Albania, France, Portugal, and Spain. Between September 15 and October 23, 12 European countries saw at least 177 protests or demonstrations, with France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Belgium concentrating the majority of mobilizations documented. Three demands recurred consistently across countries: housing, education, and the cost of living.
Luka Lešić, from the European Students’ Union, explained that the autumn coincidence has an explanation in the calendar: “Students return to campuses, organizational networks react, and changes in fees, aid, and study conditions become immediately tangible,”. Most demonstrations have been peaceful, while it also counted 49 protests ending in arrests and at least 30 with police officers injured.
Youth demands and policing
Damiano Fusa, a student at Rome's Cavour high school, said, “We are fighting and taking our future in our hands,” as he criticized Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's hard-right coalition and previous centre-left governments for cutting education funding. Luis Marques, a 19-year-old psychology student in Lisbon, said, “Politicians are responding in ways that are completely disconnected from reality, completely absurd,” as he described youth anger at soaring rents and education spending. Geoffrey Pleyers, president of the International Sociological Association, said, “These young people do not just feel like they do not have a place in politics, they feel they are not being heard at all,”.
Sabrina Brizzola, 24, coordinator of the Italian University Students' Union, said organisations like hers should “organise and channel this generational rage,”. Arantxa Tirado reflected that “The criminalization of protests makes isolated cases of violence alarmingly prominent,” as she contrasted them with what she called “the structural violence of capitalism.”
What is at stake next
The October 17 turnout brought 550,000 protesters across France, ending with more than 2,000 arrests, nearly 1,000 officers injured, and significant damage in several cities. In Italy on October 18, about 2,000 youths summoned through social networks stormed central Milan to smash storefronts and loot shops, and police took 271 to the police station, 80% of them minors. On Wednesday in Greece, students, teachers and public sector workers marched in more than 50 towns and cities, including some 20,000 people in Athens, and it cited a banner reading “From Greece to France, give money to education,”.
The union leadership has not called another nationwide strike until November 25, while it also reported a CGIL union federation one-day nationwide strike for November 20. The Conversation framed youth protests as overlapping crises for Gen Z, saying “From climate change and mental health concerns to academic pressure, housing costs, job and economic insecurity,” young people are navigating a complex set of expectations.