Generation Object: Germany is gripped by a decentralized youth protest
Germany experienced youth protests involving tens of thousands of people over the weekend, and the Generation Z Decides movement has already announced new actions in 34 cities. Thus, the number of European countries covered by youth performances continues to grow. Students are at the forefront of the protests, demanding that the authorities reduce military spending and increase social spending. If young people unite with trade unions, the scale of the actions will expand and may force governments to adjust their policies, experts say. At the same time, the German parliament is still counting on the stabilization of the situation. Why misunderstanding is growing between traditional politicians of European countries and their young voters is in the Izvestia article.
Protests in Germany
The youth movement "Gen Z regelt" ("Generation Z decides") has announced new large—scale protests in Germany - they are scheduled to take place on November 20 in 34 cities of the country. This is a new phenomenon in local politics that emerged only in October, in the wake of student protests in France and Spain. But it has already proved its popularity — last weekend, "Generation Z Decides" brought tens of thousands of people to the streets of German cities. The organizers themselves announced the participation of 120,000 of their supporters in the protests.
The association does not have a clear organizational structure and coordinates its actions through social networks. Some German media have positioned him as "the voice of the young generation robbed by the crisis." The movement declares its supra-party character, but its slogans are rather left-liberal in nature and it has already been openly supported by the socialist party "Leftists".
The Zumers demand to stop the rise in rental prices, to return cut student scholarships, to stop cutting educational budgets due to a sharp increase in military spending, and to abandon plans to return compulsory conscription. The most popular slogans on the posters were: "Schools instead of tanks" and "Housing is not a luxury."
In Berlin, protesters built barricades in the Mitte area, injuring about 30 police officers. In Frankfurt am Main, the most radical part of the protesters stole weapons from a vandalized store, which forced the authorities to deploy special forces. In Hamburg, a crowd blocked the train station, pelting security forces with cobblestones, and in Cologne, the ban on marches at the cathedral resulted in violent clashes. Now the police of German megacities have been transferred to round-the-clock duty with the involvement of helicopters and UAVs. However, escalation should not be expected, says Matthias Mosdorf, a deputy from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
— I don't think a situation like the one in Paris or Milan is possible in Germany, at least not now, given the current state of society. The reasons are probably similar to those observed in other Western European countries, but the situation is different in Germany. For example, in France it is quite easy to organize a demonstration, but in Germany it takes much more effort to bring people to the streets for any reason," the politician told Izvestia.
The German Interior Ministry has already issued an official statement strongly condemning the violence. The government claims that it is not ordinary students who are behind the riots, but "embedded leftist extremists and hooligan groups from the migrant community." For this, they will be "severely punished," promised German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt.
Why are European youth in revolt
The Generation Z protests are gradually acquiring a pan-European scale. Initially breaking out in September in France and Italy, it spread to the Pyrenees and the Balkans. Last Saturday, October 31, more than 300,000 people took to the streets of France, including 70,000 in Paris. Among the participants are trade unions, supporters of the "yellow vests" movement, as well as students and schoolchildren dissatisfied with the situation in the field of education.
In France, young people are rebelling primarily against the degradation and underfunding of the education system. In Spain, the main trigger was the acute housing crisis and the unavailability of rent, while in Italy the protests focused on galloping inflation and rising prices in stores.
In Portugal, the marches last weekend gathered about 7 thousand participants, and in neighboring Spain — at least 5 thousand. In Italy, Rome became the epicenter of discontent, where protesters against high prices pitched about 30 tents near the Colosseum, while they announced the transition to an indefinite struggle. In the Balkans, mass demonstrations broke out in Albania — in Tirana, several thousand people took to the streets demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama. In Albania, young people were sharply outraged by the construction of the protected island of Carp by the structures of Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The wave of unrest has reached traditionally stable states. In Switzerland, the protests in Zurich quickly escalated into violent clashes with police, who began using water cannons. In the Netherlands, The Hague police preemptively detained 34 people due to calls for pogroms. In Switzerland, the reasons for the riot were rising prices for rental housing and medical insurance. In Austria, 100,000 students took to the streets, demanding money for education and chanting "Youth, the future, socialism!"
In general, the main complaint of young people is the growth of defense spending to the detriment of social spending, which is why zoomers fear for their standard of living. A special loophole is in effect in the EU until 2028, which removes military spending from strict budget deficit restrictions, Egor Sergeev, senior researcher at the MGIMO Institute of International Studies at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, said in a conversation with Izvestia. This allows European governments to legally increase spending on the army, and research shows that the "social sector" is really suffering from this.
However, the key reason for the mass protests lies in the general economic pessimism, Sergeyev is sure. The current unrest is a symptom of the deep crisis of the European economic model, which is no longer able to finance the previous social guarantees. According to a recent Eurobarometer survey, one in two EU residents assess their country's financial situation as negative. The main fears of the population are falling living standards (40%) and the prospect of falling below the poverty line (32%).
The generational factor also plays a role. Today, capital is concentrated in the hands of the older and most affluent segments of the population, while young people are faced with the sensitive cost of renting housing and the rising cost of basic services, says Sergeev. According to Eurostat, in 2025, 24% of young people in the EU were already at risk of poverty or social exclusion.
On the one hand, one can see obvious similarities with the protests of the 1960s, when thousands of young people took to the streets against the authorities, says Ramil Veliyev, senior lecturer at the Department of Theory and History of International Relations at RUDN University. On the other hand, at that time the economy was growing, and the youth demanded more freedom. Today, the zoomers began to fight for basic survival and against the total loss of life prospects, the expert noted.
In conditions of a severe budget deficit, there is no money for large-scale investments in the social sphere, so officials are trying to get rid of targeted measures that do not help, said Maria Dobrina, associate professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. If the authorities do not find a compromise with the youth, the protests will increase. They are already actively supported by the largest national trade unions, such as the French CGT and the Italian leftist syndicates. If students coordinate their actions with trade unions and state employees in the near future, local protests will escalate into a systemic crisis, Veliyev warned. Then the authorities will have to discuss not small subsidies, but the fate of their political course. Do not underestimate the zoomers: it was their generation that forced the resignation of the governments of Bangladesh in 2024 and Nepal in 2025 after a wave of protests.
In parallel with the youth revolt, Europe is plunging into a crisis of state institutions. Opposition protests have broken out in Poland outside the Constitutional Tribunal building due to a tough clinch between the government of Donald Tusk and President Karol Nawrocki over the removal of judges. Meanwhile, in the Czech Republic, police dispersed tens of thousands of protesters when citizens dissatisfied with the reform of public media tried to break into the Chamber of Deputies.
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