Maya Gourdel, a 19-year-old student in Brussels, sits at a desk writing slogans against those running her country: “If we burn, you burn with us!” The slogan, taken from the 2012 film "The Hunger Games" that has been adopted as a symbol by many youth movements globally, reflects the anger, frustration and desire for change driving Gen Z-led protests around Europe.
From the suburbs of Paris to the squares of Belgrade, thousands have taken to the streets.
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 protests triggered violence – with thousands of shops in France alone being damaged or looted in recent weeks – and police firing stun grenades and water cannons.
This weekend they also brought real change – student-led protests culminated in the toppling in an election of Serbia’s long-time leader Aleksandar Vucic after nearly two years of demonstrations against perceived corruption and creeping authoritarianism.
“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 in protest-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.
“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 ructions globally 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.
Rising prices and the cost of living are a concern for 40% of 16-30-year-olds, according to a European Union survey 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, according to the OFCE think tank.
French pensions are by far the 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, according to OECD figures in 2025. But it is much more than Australia, Chile, Iceland, Ireland or South Korea, which spent less than 4% of GDP on public pensions, according to the OECD.
‘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.”
A French government report in October said pension spending had risen by 2.5 percentage points of GDP between 2000 and 2023 while that for education had declined 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 cost of living, inequality, war and the state of schools.
Unrest has also hit Albania, where student-led demonstrations against Prime Minister Edi Rama's government, fueled 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 the gritty 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."
