Violence erupts in Frankfurt as European youth demand lower costs
Protests across Germany and other European nations turned chaotic in parts, with police reporting looting and fires despite largely peaceful intentions.
By Isabella Kaur ·
Violence broke out in Frankfurt on Saturday as rioters smashed shop windows and threw Molotov cocktails at emergency services. The chaos occurred during a wave of demonstrations across Germany and Europe, where tens of thousands of people demanded lower living costs and rejected plans for mandatory military service. While many parts of the continent remained calm, Frankfurt police urged bystanders to leave the city center due to the intensity of the disturbances.
The marches were organized by the group Gen Z Regelt, which called for increased spending on schools, housing, and climate protection. Organizers initially expected 182,000 participants in Germany, but official figures from Saturday afternoon indicated a lower turnout. Despite the numbers, the events marked a sharp escalation in youth activism on the continent, coinciding with Halloween and following recent unrest in neighboring France.
In Berlin, spokesperson Lina Friedrich stated that the movement aims to fight for peace and freedom rather than war. She emphasized that the group opposes compulsory military service and seeks a fairer distribution of financial burdens. In Hamburg, some businesses had boarded up their windows in preparation, yet barricades were still set on fire during the demonstrations.
Germany is not the only nation facing these pressures. France reported 320,000 protesters on Saturday, continuing a trend that began last month with student complaints about education funding. In Paris, demonstrators held a banner reading, "We do not need tear gas for our future to be blurry." Videos from Marseille showed large crowds and fires burning in the streets.
Roman Poseck, the interior minister for the German state of Hesse, warned Germans to avoid using France as a model for their protests. He cited images of looting and burning police vehicles from France as examples of what he wanted to avoid. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced that 500 army troops would deploy alongside police in Milan until the end of the year. This decision followed incidents earlier in the month where masked groups looted stores and threw projectiles at officers.
In Rome, tens of thousands of people marched on Friday, with police using water cannons and charges to disperse groups. In Serbia, student-led activism recently helped remove the country’s long-time leader from power, a political outcome that analysts view as distinct from current events elsewhere. In Lisbon, police forcibly cleared a tent camp set up by activists protesting high housing costs early Sunday, using shields and batons to disperse hundreds of protesters.
Andrew Barclay, a politics lecturer at the University of Sheffield, noted that while the French protests have involved hundreds of thousands of people over several weeks, other European demonstrations have not yet reached that scale. He observed that the specific grievances have expanded beyond education to include a wider range of complaints. Barclay cautioned that these protests are unlikely to lead to direct changes in governance, unlike the situation in Serbia, because they have not yet captured the same level of nationwide support.
