The Wholesale Disarray of European Politics

"What connects them is less a common agenda than a growing sense that the future promises less than the present generation was led to expect."

"[A] misleading narrative of a pan-European revolt [has allowed scenes of unrest to be taken out of their national context and offered] as proof that a chaotic Europe is ungovernable."

Alberta Alemanno, professor of European Law, HEC Paris business school

"We're sick of putting up with empty promises."

"Today, young people everywhere are demanding the right to a future."

"We are demanding a break with this old world that has made life difficult, not only in France."

Lena Guerrier, French student activist 

Protesters take cover behind a plywood board as French riot police and gendarmes use a water canon amid clashes during an authorised demonstration in Paris, October 24, 2026. REUTERS/Hannah McKay

 

 In Paris, Milan and Madrid, and elsewhere student rioting has been convulsing nations throughout Europe. In the East, from Bangladesh to India, students have been demanding to be heard. Slow economic growth, higher costs of food, housing and fuel and decrepit schools have aroused the anger of students here, there and everywhere. It is not just recently that it has occurred to the youth in Europe and Asia that their parents' comfortable lifestyles in a bygone era inaccessible to them, holds out no future promise for them.

 

Centrist President Emmanuel Macron grapples with a fiery eruption of anger over budget cuts and the kind of political paralysis that has led to the appointment of seven prime ministers over a period less than a decade.  Spain's Pedro Sanchez as the furthest left European leaders yet, has announced a snap election in an effort to capitalize over housing costs protests, hoping to emerge with a majority government by smearing his conservative opposition favouring landlords while threatening to privatize pension.

 

And then there is the right-wing government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, where Italy is confronting the ire of truckers facing steep energy price rises and the general public angered by the rising cost of living and other grievances. The autumn of discontent and protests throughout Europe go well behind ideological posturing, but rise on a scaffold of a universal problem that wars in Ukraine and Iran have exacerbated, with rising energy costs impacting the cost of all consumer commodities. 

 

Anti-riot police clashed with demonstrators in Milan last weekend.Piero Cruciatti/AFP/Getty Images

 

 A recent European survey saw 52 percent of  young adults between ages 16 and 26 living with the morose expectation that their futures will be nothing like what their parents had anticipated in their day. The unrest in Spain, Italy and France, the three major countries in the European Union, with leaders from the left, right and centre which along with Germany form the political and economic pillars of the European project does not bode well for the near future.

 

Enemies in the Kremlin portray the state of crisis and the chaos it has engendered in their own preferred observations, side-skipping the fallout of economic dysfunction, but representing evidence of the imminent collapse of Western liberalism. With a generous helping of unregulated, immigration. The political campaigns of hard-right and far-left parties inclusive of Alternative for Germany, National Rally and France Unbowed in France, and in Spain, Vox have been buoyed by the prospect of opportunities they see opening before them as opponents of the incumbents.  

 

Police stand guard as students protest against underresourced schools in Paris  Thibault Camus, AP

 

"The crisis brings joy to Moscow, Washington and others who fan the flames, but its origins are global and shared by liberal democracies", stated a former French ambassador to the United States, Gerard Araud. No outreach by the government authorities of those countries has succeeded in convincing the protesters that their grievances are being heard, and steps will be taken to make some of the changes they demand. That argument falls on deaf ears of protesters who have faced police brutality in efforts to stem the violent tide of insurrection.

 

Hundreds of thousands of people throng the streets of France's cities, one weekend after another, and with the lawful action of the bulk of the protests, accompanying groups with grievances of another variety hoist flags of the Palestine Territories, smash shop windows, loot stores, set fire to vehicles and shops, indulging in criminal mayhem of a more worrying hostility backed by foreign interests and interference in European affairs. All manner of ideological politicians in Europe and abroad are fixated on images of burnt-out vehicles, shattered storefronts as they face deep scrutiny for their failure in containing the disorder.

 

Protesters set trash cans on fire during clashes with police following a demonstration over Spain's housing crisis at the beginning of October.  Emilio Morenatti/AP

 

 

Typically and with fairly good reason, some among the right-wing authorities have pointed to immigration and cultural disaffection with European values and opportunities for those who migrated with expectations their numbers in dissent would usher in a different kind of opposition demanding rights and entitlements not yet earned, have been responsible for the violence and looting. Voters due to go to the polls in Spain, France, Italy and Poland where hard-right parties challenge the centrist leaders of Europe will have their say at the ballot box.

 

While Italy's Meloni subscribes to the version of blame that casts a net over immigration, Macron in France denies any such ascription. While Meloni blames "second-generation Italians" for the vandalism seen in Milan, Macron denounces such rhetoric, insisting that all France's citizens must be viewed on an equal lens of fidelity to the nation, in a cross-section of society as a whole, realities in the banlieus and periodic riots of volatile violence aside.

 

Several European nations struggle with weak growth, stagnant wages and inequalities between the rich and poor steadily expanding in a continent where the world's biggest welfare spenders govern. Following years of global crises where the pandemic and Russia's war in Ukraine have strained resources and raised costs of energy and all consumer goods from food to household items that must be delivered by truck and rail, have skyrocketed in costs.

 

"We are not living through the end of the world but the end of a world -- their world", mocked Marine LePen from her nationalist anti-immigrant platform. "Look at what's happening in other European countries. You can see clearly that the youth are rising up all over.  t is a formidable moment, and I hope we actually listen to them", noted Olivier Faure, head, centre-left Socialist Party in France. 

 

A protester holding a banner reading "we are governed by clowns" lies on the ground during a protest against skyrocketing housing costs at Rossio Square in Lisbon on Thursday.

Patricia de Melo Moriera/AFP/Getty Images