'Nobody heard us' – why Gen Z are leading protests across Europe

The demands are various but often overlapping: frustrations with shabby schooling facilities, perceived lack of economic opportunity, cost of living, corruption, housing and a sense of not being listened to. At times, those proteststriggered violence, with thousands of shops in France alone being damaged or looted in recent weeks and police firing stun grenades and water cannons.

Read More:The model that fuels Europe's protests. This weekend, they also brought real change: student-led protests culminated in the toppling of Serbia’s long-time leader, Aleksandar Vucic, after nearly two years of demonstrations against perceived corruption and creeping authoritarianism.

After a leaderless student-led protest movement swept Serbia's former President Aleksandar Vucic from power in a historic snap election, the country is waiting to hear who it will appoint as prime minister and to other key ministerial positions as it forms a government…— Reuters (@Reuters)October 28, 2026“Waking up, the first thing we felt was certainly a sense of relief and freedom," said student protester Stasa Piletic.

"Personally, I feel a sense of victory. I feel that we finally moved from protests to responsibility.

"‘An explosion of rage’Chiara, a 21-year-old student inprotest-hit Milan, believes “it's vital to take part in people's spontaneous movements born from an explosion of rage that made collective action possible.”"I think the worst damage this ruling class has done to my generation is stealing even the ability to imagine a future, to dream," she said.

She said Italian students were confronting a reality of schools without enough teachers and crumbling buildings. Thousands of young people marched through the streets of several Italian cities, including Milan and Rome. The protests encompassed a broad range of issues from education and corruption to anti-war movements and rising costs.

Read more:https://t.co/wymlhvQV7Wpic.twitter.com/HGA35ly. Yjq— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost)October 26, 2026“And all of this with the prospect of an underpaid job which we didn't qualify for and the prospect of living in a tiny, overpriced house, probably away from our city, which we didn't want to live in.

"Protests led by Gen Z have caused unrest worldwide as the generation born roughly between 1997 and 2012 found its voice, from Bangladesh in 2024 and Nepal in 2025, to. India this year. Now Europe has become a focal point.

Read More:Teenager's hand blown off as French school protests enter third week. Rising prices and the cost of living are a concern for 40% of 16-30-year-olds, published in 2025.

Among the 92.7 million people in the EU who faced the risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2025, the highest risk was recorded for young adults aged 18-24 years, at 26.3%, while the lowest was recorded for adults aged 65 years or over, at 18.8%.

Younger people are also wary of shouldering the financial burden of an older generation that tends to vote in greater numbers. People over 60 in France make up a quarter of the population but own 60% of France's wealth,.

French pensions are by farthe biggest public expense, on track to reach 14% of economic output, as the population ages and voters resist raising the retirement age or reducing benefits. That is still less than Greece or Italy, which spend the largest proportion of national income on public pensions among OECD countries, at around 16% of GDP, 2025.

But it is much more than Australia, Chile, Iceland, Ireland or South Korea, which spent less than 4% of GDP on public pensions,.📈 El gasto en pensiones sube un 6,3% en octubre, hasta un nuevo máximo de 14.540 millones de euroshttps://t.co/1s.

HndCQzit— Europa Press (@europapress)October 27, 2026‘Young people in Europe are united’Bilal Narjissi, a 17-year-old high school student in a suburb north of Paris, has been protesting against “deplorable” conditions and staff shortages at his school. “There used to be rats,” he said.

Students were evacuated last year when a roof collapsed on the courtyard, though no one was hurt, he said.

Protests showed “that young people in Europe are united”, he said, adding, "we all agree on one point: that young people are treated like children, far too much, and that they aren't listened to enough.”Also Read:‘Threat exists’: Paris police warn of possible unrest ahead of protestsAFrench government reportin October said pension spending had risen by 2.5 percentage points of GDP between 2000 and 2023 while that for education had declined by 0.5.

It also showed 32% of the education ⁠ministry’s budget went towards pensions, crowding out money for other areas. Gourdel, too, has been protesting for better conditions in schools in Belgium. “We tried to do it passively.

Nobody heard us. It's only when people started to burn trash or that kind of stuff that the media and cameras started showing us,” she said. The protests are still spreading, with a demonstration planned in Germany this weekend over the cost of living, inequality, war and the state of schools.

Die Jugend begehrt auf. Am Wochenende will sie mit Demonstrationen auf ihre Probleme aufmerksam machen. Woher kommt die große Unzufriedenheit und kann daraus eine Massenbewegung entstehen?https://t.co/nPCh.

UfLrlY— Frankfurter Allgemeine (@faznet)October 28, 2026Unrest has alsohit Albania, where student-led demonstrations against Prime Minister Edi Rama's government, fuelled by anger over perceived corruption, a lack of jobs and poor education standards, engulfed Tirana and spread to other cities. “Our Prime Minister spent 130 days not listening to us,” said Xyke Kurti, a 19-year-old architecture student.

“If you ask a student in Albania, 'where do you see your future? ' Everyone says "outside this country", she said, arguing that at home, even if you have talent, someone with "connections is always going to beat you".

Serbia’s student movement did what demonstrators in other European capitals can only dream of. Now, though, comes thegritty business of governing, something neither the students nor their candidates have any experience of. Luka Stojakovic, another protester, brushes that aside.

"We have seen where people with political experience have brought us. "