A school without enough teachers in France, a university bill in Belgium, a rent payment in Lisbon and an eviction in Madrid may seem to belong to different political stories. Over the past few weeks, however, each has helped push people into the streets.
The demonstrations spreading across parts of Europe are not one movement. They have no single leadership, manifesto or political target, and the events in Paris, Brussels, Milan, Lisbon, Tirana and Madrid have grown out of different national disputes. Yet the demands repeatedly return to a smaller group of pressures: the cost of housing, the price of education, wages that have not kept pace with household expenses and public services that protesters say no longer deliver what people pay for.
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| Students march in Paris during the French school protest movement on Oct. 6, 2026. Photo credit: Jules* / Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. |
Most of those demonstrations passed without violence, but scenes from Paris, Marseille, Lyon and other cities told another story at the edges of the marches. Shops were looted, vehicles and public buildings were set alight and protesters fought with police. More than 1,200 people were arrested during the first day of the weekend unrest, and the government deployed tens of thousands of police officers as the disturbances continued.
The scale of the French protests has drawn comparisons with the Yellow Vest movement that began in 2018, although the route into the current unrest has been different. Students were among the first organised groups on the streets this time, initially demanding teachers and better conditions in schools. Unions, workers and other groups later joined demonstrations as the focus expanded from classrooms to household budgets and public spending.
When education becomes a household expense
Across the border in Belgium, education has also provided one of the starting points. Students in the French-speaking education system have protested rising fees, crowded classrooms, shortages of materials and reforms introduced as governments try to reduce spending.
One proposal would raise annual higher-education tuition fees in Belgium’s French-speaking community from €835 to €1,194. Secondary-school students have also demonstrated against plans to reduce education spending by €500 million by 2029, while trade unions are opposing a government savings programme worth about €10 billion.
Those disputes have increasingly overlapped. Around 30,000 people joined a union-organised march in Brussels earlier this month against spending cuts and changes that unions say would affect wages, pensions and household purchasing power. Students joined the same march over education funding and tuition fees.
Clashes have since occurred around Brussels-Midi station and in Liège, with police using tear gas and water cannon and groups of protesters throwing stones and fireworks. The main union demonstrations remained peaceful, according to police, while violence occurred among smaller groups on their margins.
The argument in Belgium therefore no longer fits neatly inside a debate about universities. Tuition, government spending, wage indexation and the cost of everyday goods have brought students and organised labour into some of the same demonstrations.
In Italy, the argument reaches the piazzas
Italy has seen a similar overlap between household economics and dissatisfaction with public policy. Demonstrations against the cost of living, fuel prices, taxation and public services spread through several northern cities over the weekend, including Milan, Bologna, Turin, Brescia and Bergamo.
In Milan, parts of the protest around Piazza Duomo descended into clashes. Police used tear gas and water cannon after masked demonstrators damaged shops, erected barricades and set fires, while dozens of people were detained or arrested over two days.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni condemned the violence and said protesting was a right but destroying cities was not. The street mobilisation, however, had begun around questions that predated the clashes: what households are paying, what workers are earning and what they receive from the state in return.
Those questions are not confined to Italy’s largest cities. They are appearing in different forms across Europe because the pressure does not fall in the same place in every country. In some, it begins with energy and food. In others, the pressure shows up most clearly in rent or education.
Lisbon’s protest is about the arithmetic of housing
Portugal offers one of the clearest examples. Tens of thousands of people marched through central Lisbon on Saturday in a demonstration called by the CGTP trade union federation over housing, wages, pensions and the cost of living.
Portugal has experienced rapid increases in housing costs while wages have failed to rise at the same rate. Protesters say the result can be measured each month when salaries arrive and rent is due: more income is being absorbed by housing before food, transport, energy and other bills are paid.
The Lisbon march followed other housing protests, including a tent encampment by activists in Porto that police removed in a pre-dawn operation. The government has also proposed changes to rental law that would speed up some eviction procedures and remove rent caps from new contracts, arguing that landlords need incentives to place more properties on the market.
Tenant organisations and opposition parties have pushed in the opposite direction, asking for stronger protections and controls as rents rise. That argument has turned housing from a property-market question into an issue that reaches workers who have jobs and salaries but still struggle to secure a home in the cities where they work.
Albania’s students are looking beyond university
In Tirana, students have taken their complaints directly to the Education Ministry. Their demands include conditions inside universities, tuition costs, financial support and the prospect of finding work after graduation.
The demonstrations have since expanded into an anti-government movement that also includes allegations of corruption and opposition to a coastal development project linked to Jared Kushner’s investment company. Protesters have called for Prime Minister Edi Rama to resign, while Rama says the unrest risks damaging Albania’s effort to join the European Union.
Clashes outside government buildings have involved stones, tear gas and water cannon. Banks and other buildings have also been damaged or set on fire during episodes of violence, while hundreds of people have faced arrest or criminal proceedings as the protests have continued.
For many of the students, the complaints begin before graduation but do not end there. The issue is not only what education costs, but what that education leads to in a country where young people cite employment prospects and wages among the reasons for leaving.
In Spain, the housing crisis acquired a name
Spain’s housing protests found their symbol in an 87-year-old woman who had spent more than seven decades in the same Madrid apartment.
MarÃa del Carmen “Maricarmen” Abascal had lived in the flat in the Retiro district since the 1950s. After a change in ownership, tenant activists said her rent was to rise from about €500 a month to €2,650 before a lower figure was later proposed. After four attempts to remove her, police carried out the eviction on Sept. 23.
She left the building on a stretcher as protesters waited outside and was taken to hospital suffering from exhaustion, stress and anxiety. Images of the eviction travelled across Spain, and demonstrations over housing spread through Madrid and other cities.
The property owner later agreed that she could return under previous rental conditions after public pressure and negotiations. She never went home. Abascal died in hospital on Oct. 7.
Her eviction did not create Spain’s housing problem. Average rents have nearly doubled over the past decade, and government figures show that 26% of Spanish renters spend at least 40% of their income on rent and utilities. What her case supplied was a person around whom an argument already under way could gather.
Thousands returned to the streets after her death. Protest camps appeared in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, housing legislation was fought over in parliament and the issue moved further into national politics ahead of Spain’s early general election.
No single European uprising
There is no organisation coordinating the students in Tirana with tenants in Lisbon, or French school protesters with housing activists in Madrid. The governments facing them range from the left to the right, their welfare systems differ and so do the policies that triggered each demonstration.
Nor is violence a common feature of all the movements. Portugal’s large Lisbon march was peaceful, while France, Italy, Belgium and Albania have experienced clashes involving smaller groups alongside larger demonstrations.
What connects the protests is visible in the demands rather than in their organisation. In Belgium, students ask whether education is becoming harder to afford. In Portugal and Spain, the question is housing. In France and Italy, wages, fuel, public spending and services sit alongside other grievances. In Albania, education leads quickly to the question of what kind of job waits at the other end.
The slogans change at each border, but the calculations behind them are often made at the same place: the kitchen table, where rent, tuition, transport and food have to fit inside a monthly wage.
Sources
- Reuters — Mass protests in France spiral into worst riots in years
- Reuters — French student protesters vow to keep up their fight after scoring first win
- Reuters — Protesters clash with police in Brussels
- Reuters — Belgian students rally over education costs, protests echoing France
- Reuters — Milan police clash with protesters on second day of unrest
- Reuters — Tens of thousands march in Lisbon over housing and living costs
- Reuters — While Spain blocks evictions, Portugal forges on with bill to hasten them
- Reuters — Albanian students protest over education, jobs, clash with police
- Reuters — Albanian PM says protests pose threat to EU membership, not government
- Reuters — Spanish woman whose eviction ignited housing protests dies at 87
- Associated Press — Macron condemns those who sought to bring down the Republic after rioting mars nationwide protests
- El PaÃs — Maricarmen: Eviction of elderly woman in Madrid sparks social and political outrage
- El PaÃs — Timeline of the Maricarmen case: From four eviction attempts to a housing movement that shook Spain
- ANSA — La protesta per il carovita diventa guerriglia, Milano un campo di battaglia