{"id":228206,"date":"2026-10-21T11:03:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T11:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/a-powerful-warning-will-europes-angry-protests-lead-to-real-political-change-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T11:03:22","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T11:03:22","slug":"a-powerful-warning-will-europes-angry-protests-lead-to-real-political-change-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/a-powerful-warning-will-europes-angry-protests-lead-to-real-political-change-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A powerful warning\u2019: will Europe\u2019s angry protests lead to real political change? – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hamstrung governments seem to have no answer to the public\u2019s furious demands, making further discontent likely
Europe live \u2013 latest updates<\/a>
I<\/span>n France<\/a>, it was the piles of wheelie bins stacked up against school entrances that first hinted at the scale of student anger over crumbling classrooms and teacher shortages. In Spain, it was a tent camp that steadily grew in the heart of the capital as residents railed against soaring housing costs.
Similar scenes have since sprung up in Belgium, Italy and Portugal<\/a>, and clashes have convulsed Albania\u2019s capital of Tirana, hinting at an autumn of protests across Europe.
Much of the news coverage in recent days has focused on the violence that played out on the fringes of the protests in France and Italy<\/a>. The protests themselves, however, point to what seems to be a diverse response to a common crisis: the growing perception, particularly among younger generations, that governments are unable, or unwilling, to deliver when it comes to affordable housing, social equality and robust public services.
\u201cThis is the most powerful warning from Europe\u2019s angry youth today, in France and across the continent,\u201d the policy analyst Alberto Alemanno said.
The framing stands in sharp contrast to the many rightwing and far-right voices who have sought to exploit the violence<\/a> in France and Italy, linking it without evidence to migration while brushing over protesters\u2019 wider demands.
Officials in France have dismissed any link between the violence and immigration. The country\u2019s president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Sunday that the \u201cunbridled violence\u201d<\/a> had been carried out by French people.
Alemanno, a professor of EU law at the HEC business school in Paris, said he had received an unprecedented number of calls from right-wing, xenophobic outlets in recent days, many of them seeking to fuel the idea of the protests as some sort of \u201cpan-European revolt\u201d.
It is a narrative that he describes as misleading. \u201cThe demonstrations have different causes and do not necessarily share political objectives,\u201d he wrote this week<\/a>. \u201cYet their rapid spread hints at a common weak point: too many young Europeans doubt that existing institutions can deliver the security, opportunity and voice they expect.\u201d
The head of the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, C\u00e9lia Belin, said some of those doubts were currently being reinforced in France.
\u201cFaced with the high discontent of young people in high school, the government has no answer for them,\u201d she said, citing an administration squeezed financially by a high deficit<\/a> and debt-to-GDP ratio and limited politically<\/a> by the country\u2019s deadlocked parliament. \u201cBasically the answer is: \u2018There\u2019s no money, there is nothing we can do.\u2019 And that\u2019s a huge problem.\u201d
The view echoes that of the secretary general of France\u2019s CGT union, Sophie Binet, after Saturday\u2019s protests in which about half a million people turned up to rail against the rising cost of living and deteriorating public services.
Binet condemned the violence, but she noted that the government had little choice when it came to quelling the protests. \u201cToday\u2019s mobilisation confirms the depth of the anger,\u201d she said. \u201cTo get out of the crisis, there is only one way. Respond to the demands.\u201d
Albania has also been shaken<\/a> by mass student demonstrations for the past week after protests initially prompted by a proposal to build a resort backed by Donald Trump\u2019s family.
In Milan, people took to the streets<\/a> to protest against the rising cost of living, giving voice to the deep inequalities that now course through a city where an estimated one in 12 people is reportedly a millionaire<\/a>.
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In Lisbon\u2019s Rossio Square, housing campaigners set up camp on Saturday surrounded by banners that read \u201chomeless generation\u201d and \u201cI just want a home to live in\u201d and vowing to stay on as long as possible. It was an echo of the protests that have sprung up in Porto in recent weeks as residents push back<\/a> against housing prices that more than doubled between 2015 and 2024, rising roughly twice as fast as the EU average.
The managing director for Europe at the consulting firm Eurasia Group, Mujtaba Rahman, said what had burst into public view was not a single, coordinated European movement. Instead the events of recent days had laid bare a \u201cconvergence of distinct national protest movements\u201d, each with substantially different triggers.
\u201cWhat links them is a growing perception that European governments are unable to deliver affordable housing, functioning public services and economic security, particularly for younger generations,\u201d he said, citing a growing gap between public expectations and governments\u2019 fiscal capacity.
\u201cThis mismatch between political demands and economic reality is likely to remain and grow over time, which suggests further discontent and protests are likely over the medium term,\u201d he said.
Arancha Gonz\u00e1lez, the dean of the Paris School of International Affairs and a former Spanish foreign minister, went a step further when asked this month about the similarities between the housing protests in Spain<\/a> and the school protests in France.
\u201cThe reasons are different, but they share the same spark: the breakdown of the social contract,\u201d she told<\/a> the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. \u201cYoung French people are protesting for education, young Spanish people for housing, but in Europe, the idea that economies generate wellbeing and social equality has been shattered.\u201d
In Portugal, the campers were dislodged on Tuesday, leading to a fresh call for more housing protests. Similar calls for protests in the coming days have been heard across France, Spain and Italy, hinting at the tremendous task that lies ahead for officials across Europe, said Alemanno.
\u201cThey must protect peaceful demonstrators, hold those responsible for criminal acts accountable, and address the underlying pressures, from housing costs and insecure work to strained public services and an uncertain technological future,\u201d he said.
\u201cEurope\u2019s democratic institutions will be judged not by how forcefully they condemn disorder, but by whether they can turn generational anger into tangible political change.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Hamstrung governments seem to have no answer to the public\u2019s furious demands, making further discontent likelyEurope live \u2013 latest updatesIn France, it was the piles of wheelie bins stacked up against school entrances that first hinted at the scale of student anger over crumbling classrooms and teacher shortages. In Spain, it was a tent camp […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":228207,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}