German Youth Protests Turn to Looting as France Marches Again
Cost-of-living demonstrations organised by the youth group Gen Z regelt turned violent overnight in Frankfurt, where shops were looted, a gun shop’s windows smashed and molotov cocktails thrown at emergency services. Police used water cannon in Cologne and Hamburg. In France, the interior ministry counted 320,000 protesters, 70,000 of them in Paris.
The protests target school underfunding, spending cuts, the cost of living and the return of military service; the organisers’ spokeswoman, Lina Friedrich, said they were “against compulsory military service” and wanted “a fairer distribution of the burden”. Hesse’s interior minister, Roman Poseck, blamed “around 100 clearly identified left-wing extremists” and warned that “France must not be held up as a model”. Crowd figures diverge sharply: authorities in three cities reported up to 18,000, while the organisers claim 120,000 nationwide. In France the movement is shrinking — 320,000 compares with 550,000 on 17 October and 410,000 a week ago — but its spread across the Rhine is the new fact for European governments planning austerity and rearmament together.