This is a translation of a material by BBC Europe editor Katya Adler, published on the BBC News website
In recent weeks, the streets of cities across Europe, from Milan to Marseille and Madrid, have been engulfed in a wave of demonstrations.
Most of these spectacular and emotional protests began peacefully, but a significant number ended in clashes and looting, shocking the continent's people. There were allegations that the violence was deliberately incited by radical left-wing groups, and there were accusations of excessive brutality against the police.
Thousands of people took to the streets of Rome and Florence. Hundreds of thousands - all over France. Since the end of September, a protest camp has occupied the central square of Madrid. In October, tens of thousands of demonstrators, mostly young people, protested in Lisbon. In Brussels, black-clad youths with their faces covered threw stones and firecrackers at police, who responded with water cannons and tear gas. In Albania, demonstrators accused the government of corruption and demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama, who has remained in power for 13 years.
The situation remains tense both socially and politically.
I spent many years covering demonstrations in Europe, both peaceful and violent. I vividly remember the passions that ran high at the Catalan independence marches in 2017, the Molotov cocktails and despair on the streets of Athens during the Greek debt crisis of 2015, and the outbreak of violence in France during President Emmanuel Macron's first term amid fuel excise hikes and attempts at pension reform.
Photo copyright Abdul Saboor/Reuters
But now everything looks different. Protests are occurring simultaneously across Europe, and most of the demonstrators—both peaceful and otherwise—are young people. Sometimes very young. A surprising number of those arrested are minors. During the clashes in Barcelona over the weekend, half of those detained were under 18 years old. According to the Italian agency LaPresse, minors were also among those whom police sought and detained after the clashes in Milan.
European governments most often prefer to clearly separate those who engage in looting and pogroms from participants in loud but legally organized demonstrations. The latter most often talk about very specific problems. During the latest wave of protests, their slogans and “chants” mainly concerned the problems of the education system, social injustice and the rising cost of living (although each country has its own set of demands).
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What exactly caused such massive discontent among European youth and why did it spread so quickly? Are all these demonstrations connected? And how will the authorities respond to them, given the fact that a whole series of important elections will soon take place on the continent? Will they listen to the demands of the demonstrators or will they appeal to older voters by insisting on maintaining order?
TikTok demonstrators
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Student actions took place on the streets of France, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Serbia and Albania, that is, in different parts of the European continent.
Often such demonstrations are organized situationally: through TikTok or Instagram. Belgium's interior minister complained about what he called the "Tiktokization" of the protest.
Student unions are involved in organizing the marches, but participants are also influenced by their peers from other countries, or even from other continents. Think, for example, of the so-called “cockroach movement” in India - demonstrations by Generation Z criticizing the local education system.
France has been a particularly strong catalyst for events in Europe: the current wave of protests began there in September and was sparked by complaints about a shortage of teachers and the poor condition of school buildings. In neighboring Belgium there is a saying: “When it rains in Paris, at least some rain will certainly fall in Brussels.” Both in the Belgian capital and in Liege, young people protested for several weeks.
Photo credit: EPA/Shutterstock
This weekend, schoolchildren demonstrated in Barcelona, preceded by a social media campaign with the hashtag #InstitutsIndignats, modeled on the French slogan Lycéens Indignés (“outraged lyceum students”).
And 17-year-old Athens schoolboy Yiannis Papanikolaou told AFP: “Our school buildings are in terrible condition. I think something will change because of the events in France. France will push Greece."
Stagnation and cost of living
Many young people across Europe are convinced that the continent is in economic decline - and their complaints extend far beyond education. They also worry about threats to the environment and fear that artificial intelligence will leave them without job prospects. They fear that the skyrocketing cost of living will prevent them from completing their studies and will prevent them from buying or renting enough housing to raise a family.
In Madrid and Lisbon, the main discontent was associated with the prohibitively high cost of housing. In Portugal, the organizers of the protest campaign wrote on Instagram: “We’ve had enough!” - and called on people to take to the streets, as they did in Spain.
Lisbon resident Carolina Cruz, 26, a biology scientist working on her PhD, said she could lose her home because her lease is soon to expire. “I’m the first in our family to write a PhD thesis, but even with all my knowledge, I still can’t get through,” she told Reuters.
That anger is shared by Ricardo, 22, a demonstrator in the Italian financial capital Milan. “We may not be able to create the same chaos in the country as in France, or close all the roads as they did in Spain, but our task is to at least get people to talk about these problems again,” he says in an interview with AFP.
However, it is not only young people with leftist views who are dissatisfied. At a rally to launch French nationalist Marine Le Pen's presidential campaign, her young supporters told me of other concerns. They called themselves the "silent majority" who may not be taking to the streets yet but are still extremely concerned about "uncontrolled migration" and safety on French streets - as well as the cost of living.
The layering crisis
Discontent is also widespread among other sections of the population: trade unions, members of the "yellow vest" movement, who first took to the streets due to the high cost of living during Macron's first term, and other civil groups are joining the demonstrations. This weekend, two demonstrations took place in the English county of Kent: one against migration, the second in support of it.
This whole rich palette of protest actions can cause bewilderment.
The director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, Mark Leonard, talks about the many different crises that have been brewing for a long time in Europe, none of which have been properly resolved. Now this long-simmering discontent is spilling onto the streets, he notes.
Photo copyright: Valdrin Xhemaj/Reuters
“One crisis is piling on top of another,” he told me. “The financial crisis of 2007-2008, the migration crisis of 2015, Covid, inflation after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and now the Gulf War.”
According to Leonard, as a result of all these crises, groups with very different beliefs emerged. Social media and the algorithms that control it are only amplifying differences of opinion, deepening polarization in Europe.
“We've seen this before in the US,” says Leonard. “People are convinced: ‘My crisis is more important than yours.’”
But Natalie Tocci, a former adviser to the Italian government and now a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, calls not to be afraid of the protests and the young people participating in them.
“It is generally accepted that young people are not interested in politics and do not participate in it. We think that young people don't go to the polls and so on, but in fact they are more active,” she told me. “They just participate in politics differently—through grassroots initiatives.” Think about the [environmental movement] Fridays for Future that took place across Europe a few years ago. Or about demonstrations against Israeli actions in Gaza after October 7.”
Tocci also points to student-led protests in Serbia that led to the defeat of longtime leader Aleksandar Vucic in parliamentary elections.
“It was something special. They didn't stop for more than two years. But how long-lasting will the consequences of the current protests in Europe be? This is not yet clear.”
Photo copyright: Yves Herman/Reuters
How can we explain the looting and violence during the demonstrations?
The intelligence services of France and Belgium stated that during the actions organized in accordance with the law, some people robbed shops when the opportunity presented itself.
They concluded that the pogroms were partly the result of “senseless violence” (as the Spanish authorities also described the clashes in Barcelona), and partly they were planned by far-left radical youth groups.
Tocci reminds us that some Italians call those who resort to gratuitous violence, such as smashing cars or setting fire to garbage cans, the word maranza (which can be translated into Russian as “gopnik” - BBC).
In France, rioters are often described as casseurs, that is, "pogromists." But in private conversations you can hear a harsher word that has a pronounced political connotation: racaille.
Like maranza in Italy, this slang term usually means something like "punks", that is, it describes angry and rowdy young people, often from a working class or immigrant background.
In October 2005, then-French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy used the word when speaking about juvenile hooligans and rioters during a tense visit to the Parisian suburb of Argenteuil.
French journalists also wonder whether there can be a convergence of interests between far-left activists and young people from France's poor suburbs, even if informal or accidental. Like the anti-capitalist left, teenagers in social high-rises on the outskirts of French cities (known as banlieues) often consider themselves victims of discrimination and complain of excessive police violence.
Right-wing politicians in France, including President Macron, blame radical left-wing groups and “juvenile delinquents” for planning the pogroms. But, unlike Le Pen's National Movement party, they do not talk about the connection between what is happening and historical or modern migration to France.
Critics say anti-immigrant parties in Europe are trying to score political points from the pogroms. In Belgium, the opposition Flemish nationalist party Vlaams Belang hinted that migrants were to blame for the violence in Liege and Brussels, calling the looting "imported" and linking it to a lack of integration and open borders. Belgian Interior Minister Bernard Quentin blamed far-left groups.
An ongoing movement?
More demonstrations are due to take place in France and Italy in the coming days.
Governments around the world are trying to stop the violence. They arrested several thousand people, and in France and Italy they promised that demonstrators who smash anything would have to pay for the damage caused.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced that parents will have to compensate for the damage caused by their children, and the corresponding amounts may be deducted from social benefits. French law already places responsibility for damages caused by children on parents if they live with their offspring.
But some of the current European governments may not have much longer left. Elections will take place in all major EU states in the coming months.
For Europe, the outcome of the French presidential elections is considered the most important, and now Le Pen is significantly ahead of her rivals in popularity. Presumably, the unrest on the French streets only strengthens her position, since her party constantly talks about restoring order.
Ratings of nationalist parties critical of migration are also high in Spain, Italy, Germany and Poland. These movements also promise to restore order and national pride.
Leonard believes populist and unconventional parties on both the right and left of the political spectrum have become “crisis entrepreneurs,” using turbulent times in Europe to attract disillusioned voters.
Meanwhile, according to Grégoire Ros, head of the European program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, traditional parties are experiencing a leadership crisis.
I would add that we may also be talking about a crisis of their legitimacy. The fact that so many people are now taking to the streets - both young and not so young - leads to the conclusion that traditional parties are simply not capable of taking control of the situation.
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However, it is not at all clear that new elections will help overcome public discontent. France, for example, is so polarized that if Marine Le Pen were to become president, many are predicted to take to the streets in anger.
Modern Europe is built on the assumption that citizens pay taxes and obey laws. In return, they receive high-quality government services - for example, in the areas of education and health care - as well as personal security and a stable society living according to certain rules and norms.
Judging by the unrest on the streets of European cities, the current wave of protests is likely to continue.
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