Italy Braces for 'Autumn of Discontent' as Students Protest
Students and teachers are pressing for better school funding and pay as inflation and fuel prices intensify unrest nationwide.
- On Friday, thousands of students rallied outside the education ministry in Rome and occupied schools across Italy to protest rising education costs and living expenses, with police reporting clashes in Turin and bottles and flares thrown in Rome.
- Real wages fell 6.6 percent between 1990 and 2026, while September inflation accelerated to 4.2 percent year-on-year driven by fuel prices, creating economic pressure against Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government.
- Protesters pitched tents in Milan's Porta Nuova business district on Wednesday and other city centers to amplify visibility; one student, Riccardo, told AFP the goal is to spark "a new major autumn movement."
- Christian Ferrari, a leader of the major CGIL trade union, warned Italy faces "a dramatic economic and social crisis," while hauliers' union Conftrasporto threatened a "national blockade" over energy price surges.
- Economist Veronica De Romanis, a professor at Luiss University in Rome, attributes the unrest to "a combination of factors linked to a fear of the future, fuelled by the geopolitical situation and economic factors," noting that career progression is limited by seniority, not merit.
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National protests in Italy
<p>Large-scale student protests broke out in Italy: more than 400,000 people took to the streets Students protested against problems in schools, military spending and restrictions on immigrants. About ten people were injured in the clashes police officers.</p>
Italy is preparing for a turbulent fall, following a sudden increase in inflation caused by energy prices, students, truck drivers and farmers coming out of the street in the run-up to next year's elections. Several disparate protest initiatives, some inspired by the movements in France and Spain, are united in their opposition to the extreme right-wing government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, writes RFI.
Lyceans, students and Italian professors demonstrated on Friday, demanding better conditions of study and work. This, on the eve of a national strike on 17 October in their country, for which many Italian teenagers called on the social network to "do as in France".
As in France, students are now on the streets in Italy. Not everywhere it remains peaceful. The protest is also directed against plans of the Prime Minister Meloni's government.
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