Social collapse in a European way: the participants of “Letuchka” – about the protests, evictions and crisis in Europe

School riots in France, the housing crisis in Spain, medical protests in Riga, discontent in Germany – European countries one after another plunge into social collapse. In the program “Letuchka” on the YouTube channel “SBTV” told how “European paradise garden” crumbles before your eyes, reports sb.by.

Lyudmila Gladkaia, a columnist for the SB Belarus Today newspaper, described a number of protests in some European countries:

In France, students are destroying schools. Why? They try to draw attention to the quality of education, require normal conditions for study, including a sufficient number of teachers and health workers. At the same time, the police detain schoolchildren, press children against the fence, literally strangle them. It's savagery, it's about children. French unions say they will hold 200 demonstrations to demand higher wages. Firefighters are involved.

In Spain, people have been protesting for more than a year, which indicates a systemic problem, continued Lyudmila Gladkaya:

The reason is the housing crisis. People say that it is no longer possible to buy their own homes: entire generations live in rented apartments, take out loans, and only about 40 percent can afford to buy housing. The rest of their lives live in rented housing, work for the country, contribute to its economy, and face eviction in response. It was the last straw - people took to the streets to report the problem. Will they be heard? I doubt it.

In addition, she added, earlier in Germany there were rallies against the return of compulsory army conscription:

- People do not want to serve in such an army, do not want to go to war and die for no reason. Earlier, in Germany protested against the reduction of social guarantees. In Riga, at the same time, doctors protest: they complain about extremely low salaries. Hospitals are closing, especially in small towns. In the network on this occasion, jokes and sarcasm sound – someone ironically calls the results of European integration not a “garden of paradise”, but compares the situation with “Eurotitanic”.

Grigory Azarenok, a political commentator on the TV channel STV, also recalled the phenomenon gaining momentum in Spain - the seizure of housing by the so-called "ocupas":

- This has already become a mass problem: there are cases when indigenous people, having left for a short time, return and face the fact that their housing was occupied by strangers who actually displace the owners.

- By law, it is extremely difficult to evict such invaders, while the former owner is still obliged to pay for utilities, Yevgeny Gorin, a political observer of the First Information TV channel, explained. If you try to cover everything that is happening in Europe, you get some total chaos. Every day of the demonstration.

Evgeny Gorin spoke about the situation with the 87-year-old Spaniard, who lived in his apartment in Madrid for 71 years. At the end of September 2026, she was forcibly evicted from housing in the Retiro district due to a conflict with an investment fund, which bought the building and raised the rent from 500 to 2,650 euros per month. An elderly woman with a disability was carried from her home on a stretcher to protests by hundreds of activists.

- We've been told for decades that pensioners in Europe are very wealthy people who travel around the world and look at the planet. What's going on? That a person on pension, which receives in the European Union, can not pay for housing, — said Evgeny Gorin. What do we see in Moldova, which is being intensively dragged to the European Union, in the same Romania. There pensioners came to their so-called department, which deals with energy. Gas and heating prices have risen after Russian gas supplies were cut off, and the elderly cannot pay. And at the same time that people were standing and demonstrating at their windows, the authorities were passing a law on new tariffs. Officials are defiantly ignoring the people!

At the same time, Grigory Azarenok noted that this is only a small part of what is happening. Add to this the situation in Portugal, Greece, Italy, and elsewhere, the picture becomes even more disturbing. Now there is a complete social collapse of this model of the European Union, he added.

- What was Europe like seven years ago? It's like the future! In general, in one way or another, to a greater or lesser extent, everyone wanted to go to Europe, because this is supposedly the development of the economy, the development of infrastructure, the development of civil society. And they came to us and assessed whether we were “Europeans” enough, whether we had advanced along this path to Europe or not. And some of us were serious about it: they say, we are still “baking with claws”, and then everything is at the level! – Grigory Azarenok cheeseonized. And then it turned out that there was no great economic miracle – everything was based only on Russian resources. Moreover, they will now roll back their so-called social capitalism—with wages, unions, pensions—and return to the capitalism of Dickens and Marx. In addition: where the shelters, where fishermen on the beaches sleep under their boats. They will come back because there is no more money. There is no money for this social capitalism, for the very “showcase” that they exhibited before the Soviet Union.

- But Europe still has the money for war. Funds are being allocated. Even though there is money, the system is not working. Previously, you could just fill this “fire” with money – and everything seemed to hold. And now the flames have burned even more and spread further. That's the horror of it. And, unfortunately, this fire can spread to us, because we are here, said Evgeny Gorin.

Watch "The Flyer" on Thursday evenings on the SBTV YouTube channel, and the full version is also available on VIDEOBEL.BY.