It’s not just young people in France who fear for their futures. From France and Spain, to Portugal, Italy, Greece, Germany, Belgium, and Albania, students and young workers have poured into streets and squares in recent days, protesting everything from punishing rents and meager pay to crumbling schools and scant university funding, the New York Times reports. While there was a different spark for each of the country’s protests, there’s a unifying worry: that the social safety net that cushioned youth’s parents won’t be there for them.
Their anger is unfolding against a backdrop of aging populations, strained budgets, rising military spending, and uncertainty over Europe’s place between the US and China. “What’s the point of working and then not being able to afford a house, pay our bills at the end of the month, have a family?” a 29-year-old psychologist in Lisbon tells the Times. The unrest, including what Deutsche Welle describes as violence in France, Italy, and Spain, has handed Europe’s far-right parties an opening to campaign on law-and-order messages. Yet “governments of all ideological stripes—a right-wing leader in Italy, a left-wing one in Spain, a moderate in France—are all struggling to provide a plausible answer” to youth concerns, the Times reports.