00:00and beyond France. The cost of living and housing crisis has been sparking unrest all across the
00:05continent. From Albania to Portugal, Italy to Spain, thousands have been taking to the streets
00:10this weekend, declaring that soaring housing costs and inflation have left them suffocating.
00:15For more, we can bring in Professor Alberto Alamano. He's a professor in EU law at HEC Paris.
00:21Good morning, Alberto. Thank you so much for joining us. Just did you see these protests
00:25coming first? And how long do you think they could last? I would say Europe's youth protests are not
00:32one movement at the moment. They reflect shared anxieties about job, living costs in the future.
00:39And they are becoming violent, at least in some corners of Europe, which is complicating
00:44the ability of the youth to convey their message to political leaders. However, treating this
00:50protest as a teenage revolution or as a pan-European movement might be inaccurate and even misleading
00:57by fooling an image of Europe that is destroying itself, which is, I don't think, is entirely
01:02accurate. You're right in pointing out that these protests are spreading across Europe. But I think
01:10their immediate calls differ from one another. And that's why I don't think we should treat them as
01:15one phenomenon. We are probably talking about different situations, different reasons that
01:20sparked this protest with some imitation that is occurring among them, fueled by media coverage.
01:26Well, how can politicians catch hold of the situation? As you've seen in France,
01:30the political response has not been adequate.
01:34Well, by now it is pretty clear that the French protests have not been foreseen or treated with due
01:41of care. They were largely anticipated, and yet the police and the public authority were not able
01:47to handle, to prevent, and to mitigate disaster. And there is also evidence suggesting that there
01:53has been some abuse of power with many thousands of arrests, some violence and accidents that could
02:00have potentially been foreseen. And that's why we've been hearing in the past few hours quite strong
02:06calls for inquiries in order to find out exactly what went wrong and to avoid this to happen in the
02:13future should this protest continue across countries in Europe. And have EU heads of state and government
02:18been too focused on issues like defence and security, far away from people's real-life struggles?
02:24Well, there are many instances in which we've been hearing students, the youth, and even trade unions
02:31and workers claiming that there is something broader than the school issue here. We see that the capacity
02:37of most countries to spend for welfare state has been reduced, reduced by this major rush towards
02:45rearmament of Europe. And this is causing concern, concerns among different peoples of Europe who feel
02:51affected, in particular the younger ones, because they know that their future will be bleak compared to
02:56that of their own parents. We have a lot of polls suggesting that more than half of the youth in
03:01Europe believe that their future won't be as right as that of their parents.
03:06And that, of course, is a very important message, which has been perhaps blurred out because,
03:09of course, it's the violence and those images that are, of course, dominating the headlines this
03:13morning. Professor Alberto Almano, thank you so much for joining us here.
