The electoral victory of youth protesters in Serbia is an opportunity to examine the juvenescent riots burning through Europe. The protests, escalating into riots in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Albania, Greece, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and Ireland began with students questioning the slide in schooling, but encompassed a cost-of-living crisis, housing unaffordability, strained public services, inflation and youth disillusionment exacerbated by growth stagnation and austeritism. These protests shared concerns: slow growth, expensive energy transitions, exorbitant geopolitics, housing missupply and generational financial failures.
One might assume that a potential Europe Spring echoing the 2010 Arab one is odd in a generally stable continent. But especially in societies skilled at self-advertising a balmy side, schisms are revealed when the band-aid is ripped off by the smallest exertion: children protesting a schooling crisis.
When this boiler blew, it suddenly brought years of creeping deterioration up close and personal. The structural pressures across Western and Southern Europe—comprising a quarter of Europe’s land area—include prices drubbing incomes: a euro-area inflation reacceleration (around 3.8 percent last month). Southern, Western and Northern Europe, which comprise 41 percent of the continent, are being drained by Ukraine and European Russia, comprising about 45 percent. The multibillion-euro support for Ukraine, and the militarisation drive predicated on the imminence of a Russian invasion, has bled Europe dry of capex.
But each country also has its own issues. In France, youth unemployment has risen to 21 percent for 15-24-year-olds—the most vocal and volatile demographic—schools are underfunded, and pensions and military commitments are crowding out youth investment. Fiscal rigidity and public spending of 57 percent of the GDP has fuelled youth unemployment.
Housing is the dominant crisis in Spain and Portugal. Italy’s inflation beats the euro-area average, and wages are sinking. Cost-of-living marches turned violent in Milan, Turin and Bologna, and sparked off supply-chain disruptions. Albanian issues include education, corruption, development projects sans popular appeal, cost-of-living and institutional distrust.
The material damage is enormous: Morningstar DBRS estimates insurance losses alone at €1.2 billion, most of it in France, ground zero. That is over 1.5 times of what was lost in the 2023 summer riots.
The protests are left-wing-led. The dominant imagery is of black-clad parkourists whom the media calls Antifa activists primed to wreak havoc. The public has been taught to fear Antifa not as anti-fascist but as anarchic—which is not the same as anarchist, a non-hierarchical, unconfrontationist ideology that falls outside the Left-Centrist-Right trinary. The hyper-kinetic ‘Black Bloc’ is helping credentialise the far-Right parties. Simultaneously, youth mobilisation is helping forge promissory templates on housing, education and wages.
The global emergence of a decentralised, uncoordinated response to structural pressures is rooted in a flashmob-like, post-ideological dynamic that seems pre-ordained to morph into political anarchism. This commonality of purpose stretches from Asia through Africa to Europe. And Africa and Asia preceded Europe. Kenya had the Jenga Movement and the Gen-Z Uprising; Nigeria the End Bad Governance movement; Senegal the Y'en a Marre movement; Morocco massive rallies against failing public healthcare systems, high unemployment and state spending priorities; Tanzania Mo29 and Maandamano against electoral processes; Togo the movement against constitutional changes extending presidential terms indefinitely.
In Madagascar, protests were organised via Facebook, and the symbol was a cartoon skull wearing a straw hat—from the Japanese anime series One Piece, about pirates fighting a repressive government. Protesters in Nepal, Indonesia and the Philippines carried flags with the symbol. Youth protests in India, led by the Cockroach Janta Party and the leftwing All India Students' Association exploded before the mid-September French student-led school protests. Italian, Belgian and Spanish protesters referenced the French example (“Facciamo come in Francia”, or We do as in France). They even timed their actions around the same weekends.
Portugal had its “Já não podemos viver assim” (We can no longer live like this). Italy had its congregational “Italia in piazza” (Italy in the square). Albania had its ‘Flamingo’ movement, in which students joined anti-government protests demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister and an end to corruption.
Can this be called a global youth movement? With some qualifications. Once the youth started the fire, the previous generations joined in, bringing with them a history of nugatory confrontationism seeking fulfilment. But the demographic holding the pennants and the drums is Gen Z.
Nonetheless, institutional youth power remains distant. Serbia cannot be easily replicated. It called for multi-year persistence; a tight focus on elite corruption and institutional failure; and street protests evolving into an electoral list. Youth vitality is consequential, but translating it into governing majorities is rare. Rarer still are young(ish) heads of States.
Mid-to-late 2026 data show that national leaders worldwide have a median age of about 64. Nearly three-fourths of people live under leaders older than 65. At 15-20 years and above, the gap between leaders and the median age is substantial. Europe and South America tend to have younger leaders than Africa and Asia, but even there many key figures are in their 50s-70s.
But countries with a high youth dividend include India, Niger, Mali, Uganda, Mozambique, Burundi, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Vietnam, Philippines, Afghanistan, Guyana and Timor-Leste. More than half are in youth ferment. Older voters in ageing societies in Europe, East Asia and North America comprise a formidable electoral bloc—but the rest of the world is witnessing an unprecedented, and unpredictable, vicenarian disruption.
Kajal Basu | Veteran journalist
(Views are personal)
(kajalrbasu@gmail.com)