Activists call for people to make their anger known over poor public services including education and housing

• Europe live – latest updates

Street protests sweeping Europe are expected to spread to Germany and reignite in France on Saturday, with police mobilised to stop potential looting and rioting on the fringes of what organisers hope will be peaceful rallies.

Weeks of, at times violent, student demonstrations have rocked Italy, Spain, Portugal, Albania and France, where activists on Halloween have again called for people to make their anger over the cost of living and deficient public services felt across the country.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

Activists call for people to make their anger known over poor public services including education and housing

• Europe live – latest updates

Street protests sweeping Europe are expected to spread to Germany and reignite in France on Saturday, with police mobilised to stop potential looting and rioting on the fringes of what organisers hope will be peaceful rallies.

Weeks of, at times violent, student demonstrations have rocked Italy, Spain, Portugal, Albania and France, where activists on Halloween have again called for people to make their anger over the cost of living and deficient public services felt across the country.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

Elections are never enough by themselves, but the stunning results from Serbia, Brazil and Hungary have given us hope in dark times

It is undoubtedly too early to declare victory, but the recent electoral defeats of Viktor Orbán, Aleksandar Vučić and Flávio Bolsonaro make me wonder: is 2026 turning out to be the year democracy slowly, but surely, fought back?

Even in Israel, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reigning bloc lost its parliamentary majority and saw the spectacular rise of Arab parties. Though the opposition may not be able to form a government yet, it does have the larger parliamentary bloc.

David Van Reybrouck is a Belgian author and philosopher laureate for the Low Countries. He is the author of Against Elections: The Case for Democracy, and the initiator of Democracy27

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Andre Coelho/EPA

© Photograph: Andre Coelho/EPA

© Photograph: Andre Coelho/EPA

Some EU leaders courted the authoritarian Vučić regime – they must offer this reborn democracy a future within the union

As polling stations closed across Serbia on Sunday evening, riot police were deploying around the presidency in Belgrade. Many of us feared the worst: massive electoral fraud, a refusal to recognise defeat or outright violence. After nearly 15 years of Aleksandar Vučić’s increasingly authoritarian rule, a peaceful transfer of power seemed implausible.

I had good reason to feel afraid. I am co-founder of an annual conference on the security and foreign policy challenges shaping the western Balkans, and sit on the international advisory committee of a civil society thinktank, the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy. Such work would be uncontroversial in most countries seeking European Union membership. Under Vučić’s regime, it was anything but.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Marko Dimic/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Marko Dimic/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Marko Dimic/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

The fine – six times the average monthly salary – will apply to people present at violent protests, even if they don’t personally commit violent acts

Albania has introduced fines of more than $6,000 for demonstrators who participate in a protest that turns violent, even if they don’t personally commit violent acts, as the government tries to clamp down on the gatherings calling for the prime minister’s resignation.

The capital, Tirana, has been racked by months of anti-government protests that in recent days have deteriorated into pitched battles between the security forces and protesters.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Vlasov Sulaj/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Vlasov Sulaj/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Vlasov Sulaj/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

The fine – six times the average monthly salary – will apply to people present at violent protests, even if they don’t personally commit violent acts

Albania has introduced fines of more than $6,000 for demonstrators who participate in a protest that turns violent, even if they don’t personally commit violent acts, as the government tries to clamp down on the gatherings calling for the prime minister’s resignation.

The capital, Tirana, has been racked by months of anti-government protests that in recent days have deteriorated into pitched battles between the security forces and protesters.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Vlasov Sulaj/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Vlasov Sulaj/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Vlasov Sulaj/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

In order to eliminate global racism, we must dismantle the ideological architecture that allows it to thrive worldwide

Around the world, racism is fueling a new wave of global unrest. In recent weeks, demonstrations in France turned violent amid mounting frustrations over socioeconomic and racial inequities, led by a younger generation that has had enough. Earlier this month, the Green party of England and Wales’s decision to define Zionism as a form of racism sparked controversy and renewed public debate about what racism is and who gets to decide it. In September, electoral gains by Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party raised alarms in a nation with a dangerous history of racist, antisemitic fascism. And for the past year, the Trump administration has pushed ahead white supremacist agendas throughout the United States, highlighted by violent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids targeting people by race, regardless of citizenship status.

To understand each of these examples of racism in isolation would be a mistake. They are connected. Racism is not merely a series of random occurrences affecting certain people in certain places. It is more than institutional discrimination in schools or workplaces or even systemic inequalities in healthcare and policing. Racism is an interconnected, global phenomenon, spreading throughout our human ecosystem and embedded in world order. This global racism, which I name and define in my new book Global Racism: A Challenge for the World, is dangerous – it underpins wars and threatens our very humanity.

Anna Spain Bradley is the author of Global Racism: A Challenge for the World and a professor of law at the UCLA School of Law

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images

L’Orchestre du Nouveau Monde’s young musicians went viral for their defiant performances during the last week’s protests in France. They belong to a fine tradition of radical orchestras. Also, today, what music should soundtrack the Traitors?

They were the last people standing – or rather playing – during last week’s student protests in France, as gas canisters landed in double-bass cases. L’Orchestre du Nouveau Monde, co-founded by young conductor Étienne Jarrier and his friends when they were still teenagers, aren’t a typical orchestra. With their manifesto of activism and social justice, the orchestra is not “a sacred object of beauty, but a tool for struggle”, through civil disobedience, outreach in schools, demonstrations and concerts, all to “present a different kind of classical music – one reconnected to reality”.

The new world Jarrier and his group dream of is “anti-racist, anti-capitalist, feminist, environmentalist and committed to de-growth”, and their way of working is deliberately provocative, not only to so many of the dominant directions of travel in the political world, but also to the institutions of classical music. They play scrappily passionate performances of La Marseillaise, of music from The Avengers, of Dvořák’s New World Symphony and protest songs but the ONM judge the quality of their performances not by playing the right notes in the right order, but by their consciousness-raising impact, whether they’re staging performances at Place de la République in Paris or at the foot of a glacier.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Sipa US/Alamy

© Photograph: Sipa US/Alamy

© Photograph: Sipa US/Alamy

A movement that began in outrage has delivered remarkable election upset, showing that change is possible and prompting questions over what comes next

• Don’t get This Is Europe delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

In April of last year, dozens of students set off from Serbia, intent on making it to Strasbourg, France on bicycles. The aim of the arduous, 13-day transcontinental journey was simple: to make their voices heard in Europe and beyond.

In their home city of Novi Sad, students had been holding near-daily protests after a deadly roof collapse at the city’s main railway station. As their push for accountability and justice spread across the country, it was met with baton-wielding police, teargas and a political class that branded these young people as traitors.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Marko Drobnjaković/AP

© Photograph: Marko Drobnjaković/AP

© Photograph: Marko Drobnjaković/AP

A movement that began in outrage has delivered remarkable election upset, showing that change is possible and prompting questions over what comes next

• Don’t get This Is Europe delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

In April of last year, dozens of students set off from Serbia, intent on making it to Strasbourg, France on bicycles. The aim of the arduous, 13-day transcontinental journey was simple: to make their voices heard in Europe and beyond.

In their home city of Novi Sad, students had been holding near-daily protests after a deadly roof collapse at the city’s main railway station. As their push for accountability and justice spread across the country, it was met with baton-wielding police, teargas and a political class that branded these young people as traitors.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Marko Drobnjaković/AP

© Photograph: Marko Drobnjaković/AP

© Photograph: Marko Drobnjaković/AP

The long-serving leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, has conceded defeat, ushering in a seismic political shift after a historic election that pitted ​the increasingly authoritarian leader against a student-led movement that had spent two years protesting against his government. As news broke that Vučić’s 12 years in power had come to an end, celebrations erupted on the streets of Belgrade and other cities. But how did we get here - and what happens now? The Guardian's Europe live correspondent, Jakub Krupa, explains

• ‘It’s the smell of freedom’: Belgrade cleans up after Student List triumph

• As students we never sought power – here’s how we reclaimed Serbia

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Guardian

© Photograph: Guardian

© Photograph: Guardian

Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka spent a week in jail after defying restrictions on protests in Delhi amid government crackdown

An Indian court has ordered the release of two leaders of India’s Cockroach movement who were jailed last week amid a mounting state crackdown on youth-led protests.

The two leaders of the Cockroach Janta party (CJP) movement, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, had spent a week in Delhi’s Tihar jail after being arrested by Delhi police last week.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The hundreds of planned events were being billed as nonpartisan, though they sought to build on nearly two years' worth of No Kings marches and demonstrations by people upset with Trump's presidency.