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.

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“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

孩子们的情况不太好。在欧洲各地，年轻人正在抗议各种问题，从教育经费不足到住房成本高昂，这给本已压力巨大的政府带来了巨大挑战，也明显地反映了Z世代感受到的代际矛盾和挫败感。

不同国家的具体抗议形式各不相同。在西班牙，87岁的玛丽卡门·阿巴斯卡尔被驱逐出家门是引发这波抗议浪潮的导火索；在法国，是学生示威声援罢工教师；在阿尔巴尼亚，学生抗议活动已断断续续持续数月，最初的导火索是美国总统唐纳德·特朗普的女婿贾里德·库什纳支持的一项豪华开发计划。

尽管这些运动的起因各不相同，但它们都像一个黑洞，吞噬着一切不满，最终爆发成一场席卷一切的愤怒风暴，汇聚成一代年轻人的共同心声，他们担心自己无法拥有与父母相同的机会。在某种程度上，这些运动也互相启发。意大利和希腊的抗议者在口号中引用了法国同行的言论。西班牙的住房抗议活动蔓延到了葡萄牙。法国主要学生组织UNEF的副主席艾丽斯·德·布里托告诉CNN，欧洲各地的学生会也在互相分享经验和建议。

卡尔·考特/盖蒂图片社

“我看到的相似之处远多于不同之处，”她说。“我们都在谈论需要投资教育、大学以及青年群体。但我们也都在谈论生活成本和住房问题。”

这与意大利学生会领导人萨布丽娜·布里佐拉的要求相呼应，她上周末在一次集会上说：“让我们……发出我们的声音，争取不会倒塌的学校、安全体面的工作、公共医疗保健和社会正义。”

欧洲通讯社每日新闻简报的联合创始人兼主编尤利乌斯·芬特尔曼认为，这些抗议活动“反映了一种挫败感，一种欧洲政治未能为下一代带来福祉的感觉”。

皮耶罗·克鲁恰蒂/法新社/盖蒂图片社

除了教育和住房问题，他还指出就业市场日益不明朗，人工智能对入门级工作的影响尤为严重，以及气候危机，这些都为Z世代的愤怒爆发埋下了伏笔。“我认为，从根本上来说，我们看到的是自由民主曾经许下的承诺——下一代将比我们这一代过上更好的生活——如今已不再成立，”他告诉CNN。

受抗议活动影响最严重的欧盟国家——希腊、意大利、法国、比利时、西班牙和葡萄牙——都面临着经济低迷和高额国债的困境，这使得增加公共支出变得困难。例如，法国国债收益率周三升至2002年以来的最高水平，给政府预算带来了更大的压力。

德布里托指出，过去九年来，每当法国新学年开始的九月和十月，都会发生类似的学生抗议活动，因为重返校园的年轻人意识到他们没有足够的教师或良好的设备。

然而，今年这些诉求愈演愈烈，学生们要求缩小班级规模、增加教师经费、投资基础设施以应对气候危机，并停止警察对青少年的暴力行为。“人们已经厌倦了等待答案，”德布里托说道。

Petros Giannakouris/美联社

教育是一个跨越欧洲国界的共同话题。据路透社报道，成千上万的学生和教师在希腊各地举行游行，其中一群人聚集在雅典议会大厦外，高呼“从希腊到法国，我们要公共免费教育”。10月7日，当学生们首次占领罗马一所高中时，他们在为自己的行为辩护的声明中，第一句就写道“就像在法国一样”。

意大利政府试图淡化其与法国抗议运动的任何相似之处。教育部长朱塞佩·瓦尔迪塔拉本月早些时候表示：“意大利的情况与法国截然不同。”他重复了极右翼的说法，即法国的抗议活动是由于第二代移民难以融入学校系统而引发的，而意大利则不存在这个问题。

然而，住房问题是另一个跨越国界的议题。意大利抗议者表示，他们密切关注着西班牙的住房抗议活动。西班牙的住房抗议活动于9月全面爆发，并最终迫使政府提前举行大选。

罗马抗议营地的学生们告诉CNN，经济适用房与良好的教育密不可分。其中一位名叫埃莉萨·帕斯托雷的学生说，她和弟弟在罗马合租的房间租金“勉强”负担得起，他们在那里上大学。在她大学前半段的学习中，直到弟弟也开始上大学，为了省钱，她不得不每天从罗马郊外通勤120公里（75英里）来上学。

其他团体也在进行抗议。意大利卡车司机因伊朗战争后燃油价格上涨而发起封锁，导致水牛芝士和部分意面的生产停滞。住房等问题超越了代际差异，也吸引了老年人参与抗议。

帕特里夏·德·梅洛·莫里埃拉/法新社/盖蒂图片社

本周，每天晚上都有成千上万的人聚集在里斯本最繁忙的广场之一——罗西奥广场。一些人甚至搭起了帐篷。周二凌晨，55人被捕，引发了进一步的示威活动。抗议者挥舞着写有“Casas para morar”（意为“有房可住”）等口号的旗帜，要求限制租金上涨，并撤销一项旨在简化驱逐程序的新法律。

而在阿尔巴尼亚和塞尔维亚，长期示威活动更多地集中在反腐败问题上，并逐渐演变成旨在推翻两国政府的运动。

上周阿尔巴尼亚的抗议活动演变成暴力事件后，总理埃迪·拉马拒绝了任何下台的呼吁，反而指责抗议者威胁到他让阿尔巴尼亚加入欧盟的计划，并将动乱归咎于他的政治对手。

“我们想要改变，所以我们才来到这里，”一位阿尔巴尼亚的抗议者告诉路透社。“我们想要一场革命，我们想要一个新政府，我们不寻求任何谈判，我们需要尽快成立一个新政府。”

与此同时，在塞尔维亚，过去两年来一直影响着该国政治的学生领导的抗议活动，如今已成为周日议会选举中对长期领导人亚历山大·武契奇最强大的反对力量。

预计未来还将爆发更多示威活动。法国两大工会呼吁周六在巴黎举行更多抗议活动，但法国总统马克龙已下令禁止“非法”抗议活动，这意味着当局只允许与工会有关的抗议活动举行。尽管如此，预计奥尔良也将出现大规模示威活动，极右翼领导人玛丽娜·勒庞将于本周末在那里启动她的总统竞选活动。

法国和西班牙的主要工会分别呼吁在11月5日和11日举行全国总罢工。在德国，一个名为“Gen Z regelt”（“Z世代搞定了”）的组织呼吁在10月31日举行全国性抗议活动。英国和意大利的学生会则计划在11月20日举行行动日，抗议不断上涨的教育成本。

CNN的Stefano Pozzebon、Pierre Bairin、Lucie Lepellec和Will Ripley对报道亦有贡献。