Why Europe is revolting and why it echoes the Arab Spring

Headlines over the past month have not been spared from the youth-led protests sweeping Europe, and the unrest shows little sign of slowing. More than 500k have taken to the streets in France, alongside nationwide high school blockades, and smoke over Limoges and Paris. In Spain, indefinite tent encampments took over Madrid’s central Puerta del Sol, followed weeks later by similar demonstrations in Lisbon’s Rossio Square. Meanwhile, masked protestors, street violence, and barricades riddled the streets of Italy in Milan, Turin, and Bologna over inflation worries. Arrests, looting, violence, and clashes with riot police have only added insult to injury as housing affordability and the cost-of-living crisis headlined most of the protests.

The string of protests across countries and cities, with each new wave seemingly drawing momentum from the last, mirrors a succession of events that hits a little too close to home for us here in Om El Donia and across the wider region. Echoes of the early 2010s Arab Spring have become hard to ignore. While it all unfolds, some questions take precedence: Is the Arab Spring a valid sounding board for Europe’s own wave of unrest? Are there meaningful parallels between the two, or is it simply a shared revolutionary spirit finding its way across borders?

What’s actually happening?

The wave of protests began in France on 21 September when students, fed up with the state of education, the soaring cost of living, and climate-change-driven issues, took to the streets to protest. The country has been grappling with years of school austerity, leaving students to battle with deteriorating buildings, crumbling classrooms, absent teachers, low pay, and long school days. A recent heat wave only exposed how ill-equipped the country’s education infrastructure is to cope with increasingly extreme temperatures.

Things escalated quickly when police arrived to disperse the protests, using excessive force and firing tear gas. Several school entrances, where high school students held blockades and boycotted their classes, were damaged by fire as a result. Many were injured, hundreds arrested, and thousands held in custody, including minors and education staff, as the protests continued to pick up well through October and early November.

In Germany, Gen Z and younger generations also took center stage at protests, with the “Gen Z regelt” (Gen Z takes charge) campaign mobilizing demonstrations across more than 30 cities. Students called for increased school funding, more affordable housing, stronger climate protections, and opposed government plans to reintroduce mandatory military service, all while voicing solidarity with their neighbors in France.

In Spain, the eviction of an 87-year-old woman from her Madrid home of 70 years, after her rent shot up by 230%, triggered protests over the country’s housing crisis and soaring rental costs. Tent encampments soon sprang up in Madrid and other Spanish cities. Portugal followed suit, with protestors setting up tents across Lisbon and Porto over similar concerns about housing affordability and the cost of living — the country’s housing prices jumped 124% between 2015 and 2024, roughly twice the EU average. Italy took to the streets for similar reasons — the rising cost of living — where peaceful protests quickly escalated into clashes between masked rioters and police, looted stores, arson, multiple arrests, and several security officers injured.

The common thread? Housing prices. Across the EU, more than 34 mn people live in households where housing consumes over 40% of their disposable income. Germany sits at the top of the list with the highest number of people affected at 9.4 mn, followed by France with 4.4 mn, Spain with 3.5 mn, and Italy with 2.9 mn.

The protests may be rooted in different national circumstances, but they reflect a wider frustration with the political status quo among young Europeans and “a strong sense of uncertainty and a lack of control.” The region is also contending with a sense of “futurelessness” against a backdrop of combined pressures: migration, demographic decline, barriers to entering the labor market, and climate-driven changes. More recently, frustration has also centred on Europe’s massive spending commitments to Ukraine’s war effort and defense. While in Germany, the government approved EUR 800 mn in arms export licenses to Israel in just the first five months of this year — more than it had approved over the previous 20 months combined.

A European Spring?

Young Europeans are facing an affordability crisis in which traditional routes to upward mobility — homeownership, degrees, steady jobs — are increasingly out of reach. There are echoes of this frustration in the grievances that brought Tunisians to the streets in January 2011. Protesters were challenging an autocratic government, years of economic stagnation, and a lack of prospects for educated young people. Similar frustrations were felt across the region, and demonstrations soon spread to Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Egypt, as younger generations challenged regimes they felt had failed to serve them.

The social media factor. Egypt’s 2011 uprising was famously named “the Facebook Revolution,” when it became clear for the first time the role social media can play in mobilizing political and social movements. Because these platforms were still relatively new as tools for political organizing, their role in the emergence of the Arab Spring quickly became a defining part of the story. The same is unlikely to be said of Europe’s protests, given how ubiquitous social media has since become. Still, its role in mobilizing demonstrations across the continent is hardly surprising. In France, for instance, high schoolers used TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and X to organize their blockades.

The Arabs were fighting a different fight. The Arab Spring was a struggle against authoritarian regimes, with protesters demanding political freedoms and, in several countries, the complete overthrow of their governments. Europe, on the other hand, is dealing with established democracies grappling with austerity, political stagnation, and growing public discontent. Protesters are largely demanding policy changes: eviction bans, rent controls, bigger education budgets, and wage indexation.

Crucially, there are still avenues for them to seek change: the next election, concessions in the following year’s budget, or the resignation of a minister. An exhausted democracy is not necessarily fertile ground for revolution. Its discontent may instead find expression in sharper political polarization, volatility on the streets, and growing support for populist movements at the ballot box.