Now Europe is paying the price for failing its youth
Behind the wave of protests across the continent lies its own broken promise to deliver affordable housing, secure jobs and accessible education for young people
School gates were blocked in France. Bricks and incendiary devices struck the Education Ministry in Tirana. Café furniture burnt beside Milan's Piazza del Duomo. In Lisbon and Athens, young people answered the housing crisis by pitching tents in public squares and outside parliament.
The images look remarkably different, yet distinctly similar, as they stem from similar grievances caused by decades of economic issues and structural inequalities, and now they form one European movement montage.
The triggers vary across the countries, whether it is a university fee, a broken school, an impossible rent, and a collapsing wage, but underneath the triggers sits the same rupture: education, work, and patience can no longer guarantee security.
For years, when high school students in France block schools or university students in Albania hurl bricks at education ministries, their actions are driven by a collapse in perceived legitimacy. Historically, young people accepted initial economic hardship because the 'escalator' of social mobility was working—temporary struggle was followed by a career, homeownership, and social security.
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With that escalator broken, the trade-off no longer holds. Street violence, property destruction, and political polarisation are the direct symptoms of an entire demographic realising that conforming to standard institutional paths no longer yields a viable economic future.
Moreover, energy shocks, inflation and fiscal consolidation have collided with a political system organised around older voters. Pensions and property values remain protected. Schools, student housing and entry-level protections remain adjustable. The result is a crisis of hope and the belief that the approved path no longer leads to a viable adult life.
Priced out of a home
Housing is the clearest transfer mechanism. It has become a financial asset, while short-term rentals and speculation tighten supply. In Lisbon, the average city-centre rent exceeds an average entry-level salary. A single earner in Madrid or Barcelona spends roughly 74% of net income on rent. In Rome, Dublin and Athens, the burden is 55% to 65%.
The average age of leaving the parental home has passed 30 in Spain, Italy and Greece. Across Southern Europe and Ireland, more than 80% of 18-to-29-year-olds live with parents or remain financially tied to them. Property ownership increasingly depends on inherited equity. Meritocracy ends at the deposit.
The labour market reinforces the divide. Older workers retain permanent contracts and union backing. Younger entrants cycle through temporary contracts, platform work and unpaid internships. The European Commission records about 3.1 million internships each year, nearly half unpaid. Family wealth becomes a gatekeeper before a career begins.
Youth unemployment remains above 20% to 25% in France, Spain and Greece, while underemployment obscures the deficit in Italy and Belgium. Higher education, once the route out, now delivers credential inflation, costly urban living and, in France, algorithmic filtering through Parcoursup. The educational escalator has not merely slowed. For many, it no longer reaches the next floor.
Different streets, shared grievances
Social scientists call this political trap as gerontonomia. A gerontocracy is a form of government or social system in which power is held by leaders who are significantly older than the majority of the population. The median European voter is over 50, and turnout among older voters exceeds 75% to 80%. Governments pay an electoral price for cutting pensions or allowing property values to fall. In France and Italy, pensions consume 14% to 16% of GDP.
The EU Stability and Growth Pact and Germany's debt brake restrict expansion. Cuts then fall on school maintenance, university budgets and student housing. The distribution is politically rational and generationally combustible, as strong-turnout cohorts protect their assets while younger people inherit deteriorating services.
France is the epicentre. Mid-September protests over dilapidated schools, teacher shortages and Parcoursup merged with cost-of-living mobilisation and Yellow Vest contingents. More than a half million demonstrated. The unrest produced over 1,200 arrests and 150 injured police officers in one day, arson at the 140-year-old Limoges town hall, attacks on municipal buildings and widespread looting. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu called containment a "miracle"; President Emmanuel Macron promised prosecution.
In Albania, tuition increases, decaying campuses, weak job creation and luxury redevelopment projects seen as oligarchic enrichment triggered five days of street fighting. Protesters attacked the Education Ministry with bricks and incendiary devices. Police used tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets. Demands expanded to Prime Minister Edi Rama's resignation.
Italy's protests linked falling real wages and living costs to defence spending over education and welfare. In Milan, masked youths burnt café furniture barricades near Piazza del Duomo and targeted luxury arcades; more than 50, many teenagers, were detained. Giorgia Meloni called them hooligans. Bologna also saw clashes.
Elsewhere, tactics reflected the grievance. Lisbon protesters built tent encampments against house prices that have more than doubled since 2017; minister Carlos Abreu Amorim rejected street pressure.
Belgian students protesting fees and budget freezes set fires and threw projectiles, drawing tear gas and water cannons. Greek students camped outside parliament over rents and forced dropouts. More than 6,000 marched in Austria against non-indexed university budgets. German student unions and TVStud began warning of strikes over inadequate BAföG housing support and limits on dormitory funding.
Youth anger splits left and right
The political effect is not a uniform left turn. Youth support is split between radical-left intervention and radical or populist-right nationalism. Urban students and housing activists demand rent caps, wealth taxes, free education and an end to selective admissions. Non-college, suburban and rural youth are drawn to promises that immigration restrictions will ease pressure on housing, schools and wages.
France shows the bifurcation most starkly as Macron's bloc has fallen to single-digit support among 18-to-24-year-olds, while La France Insoumise organises around campuses and the Rassemblement National advances among working-class and rural youth. Spain's housing revolt weakens PSOE-Sumar, while Podemos and tenant unions challenge it from the left, and Vox attracts young men from the right.
In Italy, anger may produce abstention more readily than a unified opposition. In Poland, Donald Tusk's delayed housing and social promises have opened space for Konfederacja among young men, while young women lean towards Lewica and progressive Civic Coalition factions.
This fragmentation erodes the grand-coalition model. Minority governments and executive rule become more likely. So does coercion. As established bargaining institutions fail to incorporate gig workers and students, states substitute riot police, surveillance and assembly restrictions for negotiation. Each deployment restores order for a night while deepening the alienation that produced the protest.
The unrest places the European project inside a distributive contradiction. Fiscal and environmental rules are increasingly read by young voters as austerity and higher utility costs. Both the radical left and populist right gain by promising to defy Brussels, although they offer opposing answers.
Europe's younger generation was told to study, work, and wait its turn. The schools are deteriorating, the jobs are temporary, and the homes belong to someone else. The street is becoming the institution left open to them.
