Reported by German radio DW-
Fuel, expensive food, high rents: Opposition is growing across Europe to the ever-rising cost of living and cuts to schools and universities. Protests often escalate into violence.
The wave of protests by pupils, students and their supporters has now spread from France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Austria to Albania. Opposition is also growing in Germany, the Netherlands, Serbia and Ireland.
France: Teachers take to the streets
It all began at the Lycée Antoine-de-Saint-Exupéry in Créteil, southeast of Paris. As early as mid-September, teachers there went on strike against job cuts and the chronic lack of funding. Pupils joined the protest.
Demonstrations first spread across Paris and then throughout the country. Among at least 550,000 people who, according to official figures, took to the streets across the country on Saturday, there were masked individuals who used violence. In several cities, shops were looted and cars and rubbish bins were set on fire. In the city of Limoges, the town hall, a building dating from 1883, was burned.
According to official figures, 1,800 people were arrested and more than 500 police officers and firefighters were injured. As a result of the unrest, the government announced the imposition of local states of emergency.
In the photo: Paris (France)
Belgium: Tuition fees to rise
The protests in France spread to Belgium as well. After schools were blocked on 1 October in Liège, trade unions called for a nationwide day of strike and a large demonstration in the capital, Brussels, on 9 October.
Further gatherings in these two Belgian cities, during which violent clashes broke out between young people and police forces, took place on 12 and 17 October. The protests were directed, among other things, against the government’s austerity programmes, which have foreshadowed cuts of around ten billion euros. These include cuts of 500 million euros by 2029 in the French-speaking education system. Increases in tuition fees and the abolition of free bus tickets for young people are also planned.
Italy: Looting and burning barricades
In Italy, on Saturday (17.10.), during a protest against wars and inflation in Milan, there were clashes with police. Masked demonstrators looted shops, threw cobblestones at special police forces and set fire to the barricades they had erected.
Milan’s mayor, Giuseppe Sala of the centre-left, told local media: “The reasons for the protests were understandable. However, violence against police and the serious damage caused to the city cannot be justified.”
Portugal: Property prices rise sharply
In Portugal too, tens of thousands of people demonstrated against rising living costs and the housing market crisis. Many people can no longer afford rents that continue to rise.
According to a report by the European Commission published in June this year, property prices in the country have risen nominally by 130 percent since 2013. Meanwhile, rents for new contracts have risen by 10.2 percent compared with a year earlier, according to Portugal’s National Statistics Office.
Spain: Protest in Puerta del Sol square
In Spain too, the housing market crisis is severe. Public anger over extremely high rents grew in September following the case of an 87-year-old pensioner. After a years-long legal battle, Maricarmen Abascal was forced on 23 September to leave her apartment in Madrid, where she had lived for 70 years. She could no longer pay the rent from her pension, which an investor had raised by 275 percent.
A few days after the eviction, an agreement was reached under which the pensioner could return to the apartment and pay rent not exceeding 30 percent of her income. But Maricarmen, whom Spaniards knew simply by her first name, died on 7 October, only two weeks after being evicted from her home.
Since then, hundreds of people have occupied Puerta del Sol square in Madrid to protest against rising housing costs.
Why “Generation Z” is protesting in Albania
In the Albanian capital, Tirana, thousands of people have been taking to the streets for months. The protests originated in the so-called “Flamingo” movement, which was created in opposition to a large luxury tourism project on Albania’s southern coast.
Meanwhile, the protests have turned into a movement against the government, which is demanding the resignation of Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama. Students are also taking to the streets because of high education costs and lack of career prospects. On Saturday, protesters threw stones, Molotov cocktails, flares and pyrotechnics at police, who responded with tear gas, water cannons and rubber baton charges.
Greece: Tent camp in front of parliament
Protests in Greece are somewhat smaller. On 13 October, students from several higher education institutions in Athens set up a tent camp in front of parliament. According to media reports, the organisers explicitly referred to protests in France and Spain.
For 21 October, teachers’ unions, students, administrative staff and parents’ associations have called for a nationwide strike and demonstrations in dozens of cities.
Austria: Universities mobilise
In Austria, universities have been mobilised. On 13 October, according to the student representative body ÖH, around 6,000 students, teachers and research staff took to the streets against possible cuts to university budgets. They warned of overcrowded lecture halls, fewer teaching staff, social selection and cuts to research and infrastructure.
Earlier, ÖH had collected 60,000 signatures for an online petition titled “Let’s save the universities – No to cuts in universities”. The cause is possible savings of around one billion euros in the next three-year budget for higher education.
For almost two years, Serbia has been engulfed by continuous student protests. The trigger was the collapse of the railway station canopy in the city of Novi Sad, in northern Serbia, which killed 16 people. Since then, students have mobilised across the country against corruption under the rule of the Serbian Progressive Party.
President Aleksandar Vučić, who governs in a partly autocratic manner, has called early elections for 25 October. He aims to consolidate his power, while the student movement hopes for political change/Astrid Prange de Oliveira /