F FOR FAILURE

Elon Musk's Tesla to 'wind down' Cybertruck production next year

U FOR UGLY

By Nela Heidner with AP

Published on 6 November 2026 - EURONEWS

Musk said the decision was taken in order to make room for increased production of its Cybercab robotaxi. The move comes after years of weaker-than-expected sales for the futuristic electric pickup.

Tesla will begin winding down production of its Cybertruck around the middle of 2027, as the company shifts its focus towards autonomous vehicles, CEO Elon Musk announced on his social media platform X on Friday.

The decision marks a major shift for Tesla's electric pickup programme, which has struggled to meet the sales expectations set by the world's richest man.

Musk did not clarify whether production would be moved to another facility or whether the vehicle would be discontinued altogether. He also did not address what would happen to outstanding orders.

Cybertruck lead engineer Wes Morrill described the pickup as an "incredible technology development platform" that would live on through the Cybercab.

Musk later reassured owners that the existing Cybertruck fleet would remain on the roads for a long time, calling the production wind-down "the end of an era".

Sales fall short of Musk's ambitions

Unveiled in November 2019, the Cybertruck was presented as a radical departure from traditional pickup trucks, with its angular design and stainless-steel exterior.

Musk initially said the vehicle had attracted around 250,000 pre-orders within days of its unveiling, while Tesla built its Texas production facilities with ambitious plans to manufacture hundreds of thousands of units annually.

However, production was repeatedly delayed, with the first customer deliveries only beginning in late 2023.

The vehicle has struggled to achieve the mass-market appeal Musk had anticipated. According to Kelley Blue Book estimates cited by the Associated Press, US Cybertruck sales fell by 48% in 2025 compared with the previous year, to 20,237 vehicles.

Tesla does not publish separate sales figures for the Cybertruck. Its third-quarter 2026 delivery report showed 8,295 vehicles delivered in its 'Other Models' category, which also includes the Semi and remaining Model S and Model X vehicles.

The pickup has also faced several recalls and quality-control issues, while its unconventional design has divided consumers.

• Tesla faces fresh blow as regulators recall nearly all Cybertrucks

The Cybertruck never made it to Europe

Despite its high-profile launch, the Cybertruck never entered the European market.

Its heavy construction and angular design have raised questions over compliance with European vehicle safety requirements, particularly rules designed to protect pedestrians and other vulnerable road users.

The truck's sharp-edged stainless-steel body and weight have also fuelled debate over whether such vehicles are compatible with European road-safety standards.

The model has therefore remained largely a North American phenomenon, limiting its potential international customer base.

Its public image has also become increasingly tied to Musk's political activities. The Tesla chief's close association with US President Donald Trump and his role in the administration's Department of Government Efficiency made the vehicle a political symbol for some supporters and critics alike.

Some owners have reported vandalism and harassment, further complicating the pickup's public perception.

Tesla bets on driverless future

The decision to free up factory space for the Cybercab reflects Musk's broader ambition to transform Tesla from an electric-car manufacturer into a company focused on artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomous transport.

A Tesla Cybercab is parked near the White House, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026, in Washington. AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Unveiled in 2024, the two-seater Cybercab is designed to operate without a steering wheel or pedals and is central to Tesla's plans for a driverless taxi network.

The company has already begun offering limited robotaxi rides in the United States, although the technology remains under regulatory scrutiny.

Tesla has said it intends to make the Cybercab a central vehicle in its future transport network, with Musk arguing that autonomous driving and robotics will become increasingly important to the company's business.

The Cybertruck's production wind-down marks a significant change of direction for a vehicle once presented as one of Tesla's most ambitious projects. Whether it disappears from the company's product line altogether, however, remains unclear.

 

Where would you go in a time machine? Physicist says time travel only goes forward

Copyright AP Photo

By Simon Ormiston

Published on 8 November 2026 -  EURONEWS

Pack for tomorrow, not yesterday. A physicist says time travel to the past could be impossible.

A question many of us have posed in our minds is: where would you go if you had a time machine?

Would you crank the dial backwards like Marty McFly and risk sabotaging your own future? Before you start packing, a physicist has some news that may ruin a few Marvel movies: you may only be able to go one way, and it isn't backwards.

Hongsheng Zhang, a researcher at the University of Jinan in China, has shown that in a broad class of theoretical universes, travelling into your own past is impossible.

The whole argument rests on one fact. In relativity, the direction of light can never sit at right angles to an object’s direction through time.

Imagine spacetime sliced into layers that light itself can travel along. Anything moving slower or faster than light must cross these surfaces in the same direction, like climbing a staircase that never lets you step down.

If you can only ever go up, you can never arrive back on the step where you started.

The argument needs no exotic matter, no quantum effects and no assumptions about what fills the universe. "The whole content is bookkeeping about directions," Zhang told ScienceAlert.

The two loopholes

Physicists call journeys to the past "closed timelike curves": routes through spacetime that loop back to the very place and moment they began. Einstein's equations allow them in a handful of scenarios, such as near the core of a spinning black hole.

Crucially, Zhang's research - which is awaiting peer review - also reveals exactly how a time machine could achieve travelling back in time, and it claims there are only two ways.

The first is twist. Imagine light rays that, instead of travelling side by side, spiral around one another like the strands of a rope. When that happens, the neat surfaces of light can't form, so there is no one-dimensional staircase to keep you climbing.

This is what happens near the centre of a spinning black hole. Einstein’s theory says a spinning mass drags space and time around with it, an effect NASA’s Gravity Probe B satellite measured around Earth in 2011. Close to the black hole’s core the drag is so strong that moving “forward in time” is bent into a circle.

A traveller following that circle would see their clock ticking forward in time as normal, yet their journey would arrive back at the moment they set off. Physicist Brandon Carter showed in 1968 that such loops exist inside spinning black holes.

The second is the shape of the universe itself. The staircase might be perfectly built, but it could lead around the sides of a building, so the top step leads straight back to the bottom, like the impossible staircases in an Escher drawing. You would keep climbing and still end up where you began. Most of the time machines physicists have designed on paper, including those built from wormholes, rely on this trick.

The theorem has its limits, as Zhang acknowledges.

“What it does not do is tell us whether nature permits any of this. That remains open, and it is the question I would most like to see answered,” Zhang explained to ScienceAlert.

Destination: tomorrow

Trips to the future, by contrast, are already well established. Einstein showed that moving very fast, or sitting in strong gravity, slows your clock relative to everyone else's. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station return to Earth a few thousandths of a second younger than they would otherwise have been, according to the European Space Agency.

The work does not settle whether our own universe allows a journey to the past.

For now, though, anyone planning a trip may want to pack for tomorrow rather than yesterday... unless you have the Time Stone of course.

 

‘We’re hardly producing any power’: Can Europe’s solar boom survive a cloudy winter?

Copyright Giorgio Trovato via Unsplash

By Liam Gilliver

Published on 8 November 2026 -  EURONEWS

A prolonged period of cloudy and windless weather can throttle Europe's solar and wind generations, often causing the grid to rely on polluting back-up sources.

Europe risks entering its first ‘dunkelflaute’ of the year as cloudy weather dampens the continent’s solar boom and sends energy prices soaring.

Solar, which has been described as a “shining star” of the transition away from fossil fuels, is one of the quickest-to-install and cheapest forms of energy in the world. In the right conditions, it can cost as little as €0.024 to produce one unit of power via solar panels – far outperforming coal, gas and even wind.

It has already saved the EU €42.9 billion in avoided gas imports since the beginning of the war on Iran, which broke out on 28 February. It also helped stabilise the grid in the summer when back-to-back heatwaves triggered a spike in cooling-related electricity consumption.

But Europe’s prolonged period of cool, cloudy and windless weather pose a serious problem.

Can solar power perform in winter?

A dunkelflaute – German for ‘dark lull’ – is a term used to describe an extended period when wind and solar power generation are low or non-existent because there is not enough wind or sunlight.

It typically occurs from October through February in Northern Europe, exacerbated by short daylight hours, heavy cloud cover and fog. This coincides with increased energy consumption across the continent, due to chilly temperatures triggering demand for heating.

Related

• ‘A gold mine’: How old EV batteries could help prevent Europe from wasting solar and wind energy
• ‘Every sunny surface’ is being put to work. Europeans transforming their homes with solar driveways

Multi-day dunkelflauten are rare, but such an occurrence pushes Europe’s energy grid to rely more heavily on expensive backup generation such as natural gas.

According to Bloomberg forecasts, German day-ahead power prices for Thursday 29 October were above €300 a megawatt-hour, about double the average in October, with hourly rates hitting above €500 for the evening peak.

‘It’s extremely disheartening’: Home solar output dips

On an individual scale, households with solar panels are also noticing a spike in their energy bills. One UK resident who has 12 solar panels installed on their roof with a combined capacity of 6.36 kW tells Euronews Earth that on Wednesday (4 November) the panels only produced 10.90 kWh of solar – leaving them to rely on the grid for an additional 27.40 kWh of energy required.

On Thursday (5 November), when their city was overcast for the entire day, the home generated just 2.40 kWh of solar, and imported 20.60 kWh.

This is despite having an 11.52 kWh home storage battery that is charged at night on an off-peak tariff to discharge in the day when electricity consumption increases.

Cloud is expected over the weekend and well into next week, meaning many Brits will be generating significantly less solar than they have during the summer.

“We’re hardly producing any power,” the resident, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells Euronews Earth.

“It’s extremely disheartening to see we’re importing so much energy when we have spent thousands on a solar system. However, we know that the panels will start to perform better when the clouds clear.”

Hydro steps in for solar’s dips

Of course, it is no surprise that solar produces most of its electricity in the summer months. In the EU, solar’s share of electricity generation hit 25.4 per cent in June – but in October this dropped to just 13.2 per cent.

Of course, solar relies on daylight opposed to heat - meaning homeowners with rooftop panels will still produce power even on cold days.

According to green energy supplier Good Energy, home solar systems in the UK can still generate around 25-35 per cent of their annual output in winter, which it says "provides a nice cushion for winter bills".

A dip in solar production also tends to coincide with increased generation of hydropower – which started to rise in the EU last year from October.

Solar is also able to help offset some of the electricity spikes caused by heatwaves, following a sudden need for space cooling, such as air conditioning and fans.

Graph showing share of electricity generation from solar by month in 2025 and 2026. Ember

According to energy think tank Ember, during the late-June heatwave this summer, daily electricity demand rose by up to 28 per cent in Italy, 23 per cent in Hungary, 14 per cent in France and 13 per cent in Spain compared with pre-heatwave days.

It says that as heatwave-driven demand increased, solar was the only major power source to perform “better than usual”. Compared with other days in June and July, average daily solar generation during the heatwaves was 17 per cent higher in France and Hungary, five per cent higher in Spain and the same in Italy.

A typical UK home with rooftop solar generated enough electricity to power an A/C unit for five hours per day during the hot spell, a separate Ember analysis found.

At the same time, water-intensive forms of energy such as coal, hydropower and nuclear struggle during heatwaves – as scorching temperatures and lack of rainfall increase cause prolonged periods of drought.

In August, Poland was forced to reduce output on its coal-fired power plants, which require massive amounts of water for cooling, following critically low water levels in the Vistula River.

The move temporarily removed 1.3 GW from Poland’s power system, enough to power more than one million average households. This is around two per cent of the country’s current energy capacity.

A Teleported Letter Q Is Not Yet A Quantum Internet – Analysis

November 8, 2026

By Burak Oktenli

Key Takeaways:

China’s August Physical Review Letters demonstration of parallel quantum teleportation across a 100-mode 10-by-10 grid is a genuine milestone in handling fragile quantum information, but it does not constitute a general-purpose quantum internet.

Parallel advances—NIST’s 62 km entangled-photon distribution over commercial fiber, Germany’s multi-region QuNET quantum key distribution network, and India’s 5.56 km free-space QKD trial—address distinct technical questions of distance, environmental robustness and secure-key generation.

The article argues that future funding and claims should distinguish laboratory results from usable network services, requiring reports on delivery rate, fidelity, operating duration, recovery and interoperability rather than treating headline figures as interchangeable evidence of readiness.

China’s 100-channel experiment is genuine progress. Recent American, European and Indian tests reveal the harder task: proving a quantum network works beyond one carefully controlled demonstration.

A letter Q has become an unlikely symbol of the global quantum race. In August, researchers in Shanghai reported transferring the quantum states associated with a 100-element optical image in parallel. In late October, scientists in Germany switched on an experimental quantum communications network connecting several regions. Both were genuine technical milestones. Neither meant that a general-purpose quantum internet had arrived.

The distinction matters because governments are now funding quantum networks as strategic infrastructure. Laboratories demonstrate different physical capabilities; political announcements often gather them under one ambitious label. A competition built around the largest number risks overlooking the question that eventually matters to users: what useful quantum service can another institution obtain, at a known quality, over a dependable connection?


The Chinese result deserves its excitement. In a Physical Review Letters study published on August 20, Yanbo Lou, Jietai Jing and colleagues at East China Normal University reported quantum teleportation through 100 independently addressable spatial modes arranged in a reconfigurable 10-by-10 grid. The team combined programmable holographic encoding with all-optical feedforward, transferring an optical array and a letter-shaped image with fidelities above the relevant classical benchmarks. The American Physical Society’s explanation describes how the array could be reconstructed in parallel rather than handled as 100 unrelated experiments.

But no one needed quantum mechanics to send an ordinary picture of a Q. The experiment transferred quantum states of light, not an email attachment, a person, or matter. Quantum teleportation uses previously shared entanglement and a physical communication step to reconstruct a state at the receiving end. It does not permit faster-than-light messaging. The achievement is parallel handling of fragile quantum information; the unresolved question is what happens when that apparatus becomes a network with distance, downtime, changing equipment and users.
Four advances, four different questions

The United States has been testing the distance and operating-environment problem. In an August 5 report, the National Institute of Standards and Technology described distributing entangled photons over 62 kilometers of commercial optical fiber between Maryland research sites. Most of the fiber ran above ground and was exposed to temperature changes, wind and other disturbances. The team maintained entanglement distribution for 92.8 percent of a 24-hour test period. That is a meaningful result about environmental robustness, not a claim that an operational nationwide quantum internet achieved 92.8 percent availability.


Germany is pursuing a related but different task. On October 28, the federally supported QuNET initiative demonstrated an experimental multi-region quantum communications network involving Bavaria, Thuringia and Berlin. Its central application is quantum key distribution, or QKD, in which quantum methods help distribute cryptographic keys. The demonstration matters for secure communications engineering. It is not equivalent to teleporting arbitrary quantum states between general-purpose quantum processors.

India provides another distinct benchmark. A government report released October 3 described a 5.56-kilometer free-space QKD trial conducted in late September. The researchers reported a quantum bit-error rate below five percent and key generation of roughly 230–260 bits per second during the test. On October 16, India announced further support for indigenous quantum-secure and sensing technologies. These are significant steps in field testing and domestic capability, but the bit rate is a cryptographic key rate, not the throughput of a universal quantum-data network.

Europe’s larger EuroQCI program aims to connect national and cross-border quantum communication infrastructure, with terrestrial and planned satellite components. Its 2026 work includes testing and certification planning. Here again, a secure-key-distribution infrastructure and a future internet that can deliver entanglement to distant quantum processors have overlapping technology needs, but they are not the same finished product.


The comparison is not an international ranking. China demonstrated parallel state transfer, American researchers tested entanglement over noisy deployed fiber, Germany demonstrated a regional QKD network, and India tested a free-space key link. Each answered a different technical question. Treating their results as interchangeable evidence of quantum-internet readiness would obscure the engineering work each still needs.
A network needs a service, not only a demonstration

A useful quantum internet could eventually link quantum computers, synchronize certain distributed sensors or support specialized cryptographic protocols. It would work alongside classical communications, not replace them. The central challenge is to provide a quantum resource that a receiving application can request, use and verify under stated conditions.

The networking community already has a starting point. RFC 9340, published by the Internet Research Task Force, describes entanglement as a fundamental network service and fidelity as part of that service. It also explains why coordinating quantum states requires classical signaling and why future networks must accommodate different hardware. The RFC is an informational research document, not an internationally binding deployment standard. Its value is that it asks network engineers to specify what is delivered, not merely what apparatus was demonstrated.

Governments financing quantum-network testbeds should require two reports for every substantial milestone. One should document the scientific result on its own terms: the states or keys involved, experimental conditions, relevant classical benchmarks and uncertainties. The other should document the proposed service: useful delivery rate at the quality an application requires, distance and number of endpoints, operating duration, interruptions, recovery time and the resources consumed to sustain performance.

Those reports must preserve distinctions. An impressive average fidelity can hide poor performance in some channels. A high key-generation rate does not establish that a distant processor received a usable quantum state. A stable optical link between two research groups does not yet demonstrate interoperability between products from different suppliers. One cannot infer a working application from any single headline figure.

There is a practical way to make the comparison meaningful without prescribing the winning technology. Fund independent testbeds in which two or more institutions attempt a defined task using equipment that is not identical at both ends. Record not just the best run but performance across repeated operating periods and planned disturbances. Include how failures are detected, which calibration work is needed, and whether a replacement component changes the result. Report tests that do not meet their acceptance condition rather than hiding them in an average.

The predictable objection is that demanding operational measurements too early could punish speculative science. That is fair. Exploratory projects should remain free to attempt difficult experiments without promising immediate commercial value. The additional service report should become essential when a laboratory advance is used to justify an infrastructure procurement, an international interoperability claim or a promised application—not as a condition for every basic-science grant.


This is already becoming a policy question. A June 2026 US executive order called for five-year plans in quantum sensing and networking; the National Science Foundation’s Project Triad seeks to integrate computing, sensing and networking in operational settings. Other governments are investing in their own technology ecosystems. Their common interest is not a universal choice of optics or quantum hardware. It is a body of evidence that allows a funder, collaborator or customer to tell what has actually become dependable.

The Shanghai experiment demonstrated something important: 100 spatial channels can participate in a parallel quantum operation without 100 separately managed setups. That engineering insight deserves further development. But the next decisive quantum-internet milestone will not be a bigger letter on a laboratory screen. It will be a quantum connection that an independent user can request, test and rely upon.

About Burak Oktenli
Burak Oktenli holds an MBA and a Master of Professional Studies in Applied Intelligence from Georgetown University. His research addresses the governance of authority in autonomous and AI-enabled systems, and his writing has appeared at the Modern War Institute at West Point, RUSI, RealClearDefense, RealClearMarkets, and Geopolitical Monitor. He is the author of Authority Architectures for Autonomous Systems, a ten-volume series on how authority in autonomous systems is delegated, monitored and recovered, at authority-architecture.me.
View all posts by Burak Oktenli →

Youth Protests And The Future Of Democracy – Analysis

November 8, 2026

By Ramesh Jaura

Key Takeaways:

Youth-led protests across Europe over education funding, rents, employment and, in some cases, military spending have drawn in workers, tenants and pensioners, with varying results: Serbia’s student-backed list won 140 of 250 seats on 25 October 2026, while French students continued demonstrating despite government concessions.

Turnout and organisation differed sharply—Germany’s rallies fell well short of expected numbers, Italy’s marches joined a general strike, and Spain’s campaign centred on tenant rights—while most marches were reported as largely peaceful.

Experiences in Bangladesh and Nepal show that uprisings can oust governments yet leave protest-linked forces with limited or uneven parliamentary strength.

Youth protests across Europe have brought school funding, unaffordable rents and uncertain employment into a wider dispute about who gets heard in politics. Their peaceful campaigns, following upheavals in Bangladesh and Nepal, have drawn in workers, tenants and pensioners.

Some governments have offered concessions; elsewhere, political parties challenged by the protests have lost elections. The movements share grievances, but their political fortunes differ. The ability to bring people into the streets has not always given their organisers influence over the government that follows.

Violence and destruction reported around some demonstrations belong to a separate account. Reuters described Italy’s marches on 30 October 2026 as largely peaceful while reporting confrontations and fires in particular places. Its coverage of France on 5 November similarly distinguished the main marches from clashes and vandalism. Those acts rest with the people involved. Their presence does not make peaceful participants responsible or turn the campaigns’ demands into a programme of violence.



Much of the discontent concerns ordinary expectations of adult life: a place to study, a job, an affordable home. In Germany and Italy, protesters have also questioned military spending and, in Germany, military service. In Serbia, demands for responsibility after a fatal railway-station disaster developed into a campaign against the governing party. Bangladesh and Nepal have already held elections after uprisings helped oust their prime ministers.

The term “Gen Z” has travelled with pictures of the protests. It says less about who organises them, who joins them or who eventually gains power. A tenants’ campaign in Madrid, a German student initiative and a Serbian electoral list operate in different political worlds, even when their supporters recognise something of their own frustration in one another.Subscribe
Serbia after the vote

In Serbia, the argument began with a building that should have been safe. The canopy at Novi Sad railway station collapsed on 1 November 2024, ultimately killing 16 people. Demands for documents and criminal responsibility grew into protests against alleged corruption, official secrecy and the concentration of power under Aleksandar Vučić.


Students kept the campaign going and took it beyond the universities. By the parliamentary election of 25 October 2026, a student-backed list offered voters an alternative to the governing bloc. Final results announced on 5 November gave it 140 of the National Assembly’s 250 seats. The Vučić-associated bloc won 103.

The result followed two years of protest, as Reuters reported on 26 October. The campaign had acquired the organisation and support needed to contest an election. The railway disaster remained its starting point, but voters were now choosing who would govern on a much broader range of issues.

That broader programme was less clear. Reuters’ post-election account described uncertainty about how the new leadership would govern. People who had agreed on the need to remove the old majority would not necessarily agree on spending, appointments or foreign policy. The common demand for accountability had helped unite them during the protests; office would bring other disagreements into view.

For the moment, Serbia’s election records a transfer of parliamentary power. Changes to the courts, public administration and media will take longer to assess. The victory allows the campaign to pursue its demands through government, but the result alone says little about how those institutions will work under its allies.
Europe beyond Belgrade

Germany’s protests have followed a less unified course. Students blocked university buildings in Berlin and Hamburg on 28 October 2026, opposing education cuts and plans to revive military conscription. Reports described the blockade at the Free University’s Otto Suhr Institute in Berlin. The students linked the money available for education with the obligations the government might impose on their generation.

Three days later, on 31 October, thousands joined rallies organised by “Gen Z regelt”. Demonstrations were planned in 34 cities, among them Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich. Reuters reported demands for better education, lower living costs, and opposition to compulsory military service.

The condition of university buildings was one complaint. Sean Baker, a student at the Technical University of Berlin, told Reuters: “When you go inside and enter the rooms, it looks like an abandoned building.” Such accounts gave the funding dispute a more immediate meaning than the figures in a budget debate.

The crowds were smaller than organisers had anticipated. Police in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich counted a combined 6,000 participants compared with about 36,000 shown for those cities on the organisers’ website. Nationwide expectations had initially reached 182,000. Those figures were not a final national tally but exposed a substantial gap between the campaign’s expectations and the turnout reported at the time.

Student organisations also disagreed. The national school-student umbrella organisation, the BSK, distanced itself from “Gen Z regelt” while recognising the grievances of the students involved. It planned a separate protest day for 20 November. Germany thus had several organising efforts, with no single body speaking for all the young people dissatisfied with education or government policy.

Italy’s marches brought students more directly into a labour campaign. On 30 October 2026, tens of thousands took part in demonstrations during a 24-hour general strike called by the Unione Sindacale di Base. Reuters reported demands for higher wages and stronger public services, opposition to increased military spending and marches planned in more than 40 cities. In Genoa, students and port workers joined other demonstrators protesting against arms shipments.

ANSA reported the same day that school and university students, workers and some parents marched in Rome, Milan, Naples, Turin, Venice and Palermo. Student groups connected rent and utility bills with insecure work. They described an economy where daily expenses were becoming harder to meet while wages lost purchasing power.

The alliance widened the constituency behind the students’ demands. Education funding was discussed alongside pay, public services and household costs. For the unions, students added another group affected by the same pressures; for the students, the strike provided organisation beyond the campus.

Most marches were peaceful according to reports. Confrontations also occurred in Turin, and fires broke out in Rome after rioting and looting in Milan on 17–18 October. Those episodes were separate from the peaceful participation of the larger crowds. Accounts centred on disorder alone would miss the breadth of the strike and the demands that brought students and workers together.

Spain’s campaign shows particularly clearly why these protests cannot all be described as student revolts. On 26 September 2026, thousands marched in Madrid after the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal—Reuters’footage and reporting recorded demands to stop evictions. A subsequent Reuters chronology gave the government delegation’s estimate of about 25,000 participants. Protesters set up an encampment in Puerta del Sol that evening.


For younger tenants, the problem was finding and keeping an affordable home. For older residents, an eviction could threaten a tenancy held for decades. Abascal’s case brought those concerns into the same campaign. Age divided their circumstances less sharply than the difference between people who depended on renting and those who controlled access to housing.

Further demonstrations were called for 3–4 October in more than 20 cities, including Madrid, València, Cádiz and Murcia, according to Público’s report of 1 October updated the following day. Those were announced actions rather than a count of the marches that eventually took place. By 28 October, Civic Space Watch reported ongoing encampments in several cities and a joint strike over housing and wages called for 11 November.

France offers an example of government concessions that failed to end a campaign. On 26 October 2026, Reuters reported that student representatives intended to continue demonstrating despite proposals on class sizes, school renovation and replacement of the admissions system they considered unfair.

By 5 November, students were marching with workers in nationwide demonstrations over living standards and public services. Reuters recorded the Interior Ministry’s estimate of 575,000 participants and the CGT union’s figure of 1.6 million. Most marches were peaceful. Clashes in Paris and Lyon formed a separate part of the day’s events.

The education proposals had given the student representatives something to negotiate. They had not removed the wider complaints about wages and public services, which helped bring other groups into the demonstrations. The government faced a campaign whose participants no longer shared a single set of demands.

In Greece, school and university students marched with teachers on 21 October 2026 seeking more education funding, better facilities and less crowded classrooms. Reuters reported a police estimate of about 10,000 participants in Athens and its suburbs, with rallies elsewhere. Students had camped overnight in Syntagma Square. Their expressions of solidarity with France suggested that participants were following events across borders, although the campaigns remained nationally organised.

The autumn demonstrations followed months of campus activity. The European Students’ Union’s fifth monitoring report, published in early November, recorded 47 actions in 13 countries between 16 May and 16 July 2026. They included university-funding protests in Austria and Palestine solidarity campaigns in the Netherlands. The previous period, 16 March–16 May, had recorded 54 actions in 22 countries.

The union cautioned against treating the two totals as a precise measure of growth or decline: reporting coverage varied, and some campaigns continued from one period to another. Even so, the accounts show that education, living costs and overseas conflicts were already bringing students into public protest before the autumn marches.


Jobs are part of the background. Eurostat reported on 30 October 2026 that EU unemployment among economically active people under 25 stood at 15.5 per cent in September compared with 6.2 per cent across the workforce. The youth rate excludes people outside the labour force, including many students; it is not the proportion of all young people without a job. Nor does employment settle the other complaints. Spain’s tenants campaigned about housing security, and students in Germany, France and Greece about the cost and condition of education. The Italian strike brought those concerns together with pay. These overlaps help explain why demonstrations often include people at different stages of life, even when they are presented as the work of one generation.

Military expenditure has added a dispute about priorities. German and Italian demonstrators have questioned why governments are allocating resources to defence while education and other services face restrictions. That is the protesters’ budget argument. It does not by itself establish that a particular defence increase caused a particular education cut. The proposed burden of military service gives the German dispute an additional personal dimension for the young people who might be affected.
After the uprisings

Bangladesh and Nepal show how much can change between a prime minister’s fall and the election that follows.

In Bangladesh, protests against public-employment quotas became a national uprising in July–August 2024. Sheikh Hasina left the country on 5 August. A UN Human Rights Office investigation published on 12 February 2025 found reasonable grounds to believe that the former government and its security apparatus, together with violent elements associated with the Awami League, had systematically committed serious human rights violations. The investigation made state repression central to how a dispute over jobs became a confrontation with the government.

The students who helped force that change gained little parliamentary strength in the subsequent election. Reuters reported on 13 February 2026 that the protest-linked National Citizen Party had won six seats in the 300-member parliament in the vote held the previous day. The established Bangladesh Nationalist Party was the principal winner.

The uprising had changed the political field, but an older party remained best positioned to benefit from it. Protest organisers faced an election in which local networks, candidates and party recognition counted alongside their role in the streets. The result left a considerable distance between their contribution to the change of government and their parliamentary representation.

There was another qualification. The Awami League was excluded so voters chose from a different set of competitors than those that had dominated politics before the uprising. The EU election observation mission’s preliminary statement on 14 February 2026 also highlighted partisan information pollution online. The election result needs to be read alongside those conditions rather than as an uncomplicated verdict on every political force involved in the upheaval.


Nepal’s election brought a new party to power. Protests began on 8 September 2025 amid anger about corruption and a social-media ban. Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli resigned the next day. Reuters’ account of 9 September described a confrontation in which restrictions on online platforms aggravated wider frustration over corruption and limited economic opportunity.The election on 5 March 2026 gave the Rastriya Swatantra Party, founded in 2022, 182 of 275 parliamentary seats. Balendra Shah was sworn in as prime minister on 27 March. Unlike Bangladesh, where a long-established party gained most from the transition, Nepal’s voters gave a large majority to a newer challenger.

That majority did not extend through the whole parliamentary system. The British House of Commons Library’s assessment noted that the party had no seats in the upper chamber. Some legislative changes would therefore depend on cooperation with other parties, despite the scale of the lower-house victory.

An October 2026 analysis by the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute argues that calling both upheavals “Gen Z” movements obscures the different political systems where they developed. Bangladesh’s protest-linked candidates competed against established party organisations. In Nepal, the newer RSP absorbed much of the demand for an alternative. The age of protesters was only one part of either story.
Memories of 1968

The European marches recall the late 1960s most closely when students join workers and a campus dispute becomes part of a national argument. The comparison is less convincing if it assumes that similar pictures will produce similar results.

In France, the general strike of 13 May 1968 was followed by factory occupations and a rapidly widening stoppage, as the Charles de Gaulle Foundation’s chronology records. Workers’ involvement changed the scale of a crisis that had begun around universities. Cooperation between students and labour organisations was also uneasy, with each having its own leadership and demands.

West Germany’s dispute included a direct argument about the powers of the state. The Bundestag’s historical account describes the march on Bonn against proposed emergency laws on 11 May 1968 and the laws’ passage on 30 May. Students, trade unionists and other opponents feared restrictions on rights during an emergency; the governing coalition defended the legislation as necessary preparation for a crisis.

Today’s German argument about military service is different, but it too concerns decisions the state can make about young people’s lives. Italian students’ participation in a union strike and French students’ marches alongside workers provide other points of comparison. None amounts to a return of 1968. The parties, unions and economies around the protesters have changed, as have the means of organising and communicating.


The earlier Western European movements grew during an expansion of higher education and prosperity, although access remained unequal. Housing costs, insecure prospects and the condition of public services feature heavily in the present demands. The people marching now also have different routes into politics: a tenant organisation, an existing union, a student initiative or, in Serbia, an electoral list.

Digital communication helps publicise all of them. Germany’s smaller-than-expected turnout shows the limits of equating online interest with participation. Serbia’s victory also required persuading people to vote. A shared label and rapid image circulation cannot explain why one campaign remains a protest and another wins parliamentary seats.Subscribe
Protest and political power

The effect on democracy is already visible in who participates. Students have helped put neglected complaints before governments and brought people from different age groups into the same campaigns. Spain’s housing protests and Italy’s student–worker marches show that wider participation. Germany’s competing initiatives show how disputed the claim to represent the young can be.

There have also been practical political results. France has offered education measures while demonstrations continue. Serbia’s student-backed candidates have won a majority. Nepal has elected a newer party after a youth-led upheaval, while Bangladesh’s protest-linked party remains a small parliamentary presence. These outcomes give little basis for assuming either that protesters will inherit power or that their influence ends when a march disperses.


The next stage is less settled. In France, the dispute concerns what concessions will be accepted and carried out. Serbia’s new majority faces decisions beyond the demand that first united its supporters. Nepal’s lower-house mandate operates alongside an upper chamber controlled by other parties. Bangladesh’s transition has returned a long-established party to government under changed competitive conditions.

A change in officeholders can be counted on election night. Changes in institutional independence, the handling of public money, or the treatment of political opponents emerge over a longer period. The protests have already altered party competition and forced negotiations. Whether they also change the way government works remains an open question, with different answers likely in each country.


About Ramesh Jaura

Ramesh Jaura is a journalist with 60 years of experience as a freelancer, head of Inter Press Service, and founder-editor of IDN-InDepthNews. His work draws on field reporting and coverage of international conferences and events.
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Academic fraud scandals reveal accountability gap in Eastern Europe

From Bucharest to Belgrade and Bratislava, ministers caught copying their theses usually keep their jobs, and often their degrees as well. / Yara Solis Fuentes via Pexels

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By Clare Nuttall in Glasgow November 7, 2026

Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius has been given six months to amend his doctoral dissertation after a university found five instances of plagiarism, highlighting the difficulties of holding senior politicians in Central and Eastern Europe accountable for academic misconduct.

The ethics commission of ISM University of Management and Economics in Vilnius identified five instances of plagiarism and two further cases of improper text use that fell short of plagiarism in Sinkevicius's 2015 doctoral dissertation on alcohol consumption, according to a decision adopted on October 26.

The university has ordered him to correct the dissertation within six months. The amended work will be reviewed by the doctoral committee and published alongside a supplement detailing the changes. If Sinkevicius fails to comply, the university could initiate proceedings to withdraw his degree, Lithuanian news agency BNS and public broadcaster LRT reported on October 30.

"I conducted the data analysis and formulated the conclusions myself. Therefore, I have never doubted my work, but I do not dispute the violations identified," Sinkevicius told BNS.

The controversy emerged on social media in July, weeks after parliament backed the Social Democrat leader as prime minister on June 30. ISM initially said it trusted its examiners and would not reopen the dissertation. On July 31, however, its ethics commission agreed to investigate a complaint submitted by Lithuania's Office of the Ombudsperson for Academic Ethics and Procedures.

Sinkevicius's case is the latest in a succession of academic integrity scandals involving presidents, prime ministers and ministers across the region. Over the past 15 years, politicians in at least 10 other countries have faced allegations of copying academic work.

Some have resigned, while others have retained their positions and qualifications despite findings of misconduct. Universities, ethics bodies and courts have frequently struggled to impose sanctions, with political intervention, legal challenges and restrictions on retrospective degree withdrawals complicating enforcement.

The politicians who resigned

Hungary's former president Pal Schmitt remains one of the most prominent political casualties of a plagiarism scandal.

A university investigation in March 2012 found that over 200 of the 215 pages of his 1992 doctoral dissertation had been translated word for word from other authors' work. The university withdrew his doctorate.

Schmitt initially refused to resign, blaming the examiners who had approved his dissertation. Demonstrators called him the "Photocopier of the nation". He stepped down after the controversy prompted dissent within then prime minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party and criticism from academics and the far-right Jobbik party.

In the Czech Republic, Prime Minister Andrej Babis's government lost two ministers in 2018 over allegations of academic copying.

Justice Minister Tatana Mala resigned after 13 days in office following allegations that passages in her two theses had been copied without attribution. Labour Minister Petr Krcal quit a week later after an expert at Prague's University of Economics estimated that around 75% of his bachelor's thesis had been copied.

Slovenian Education Minister Klavdija Markez lasted just five days before resigning over her master's thesis.

Austria's labour minister Christine Aschbacher resigned in January 2021 after allegations that both her master's and doctoral dissertations contained plagiarised material. She had completed her doctorate in Slovakia while serving in the Austrian government.

Romania's recurring scandals

Romania has experienced a particularly persistent series of controversies involving senior officials and academic qualifications.

In 2012, the journal Nature reported that Prime Minister Victor Ponta had copied substantial parts of his law doctorate, supervised by former prime minister Adrian Nastase. Romania's national council for academic titles found that 85 pages had been reproduced word for word.

Ponta's government attempted to dismantle the committee and transfer its powers to a body within the education ministry, which cleared him. Ponta relinquished his doctorate in 2014, but the education ministry did not formally withdraw his PhD until August 2016.

The same month, the council ruled that former interior minister and deputy prime minister Gabriel Oprea had plagiarised his dissertation.

Mihai Tudose, nominated prime minister in 2017, had already surrendered his doctorate after allegations of copying. He said he had paid the original author to use the material.

Investigations continued to implicate senior officials. Journalist Emilia Sercan reported in 2022 that Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca, a former general, had plagiarised material on 42 of the 138 pages of his 2003 dissertation. Ciuca denied the allegations. A criminal complaint prevented the university from examining the thesis for more than a year before prosecutors closed the case in March 2023 because it was time-barred.

Education minister Sorin Cimpeanu resigned in 2022 amid separate allegations, while Sercan reported that former interior minister Lucian Bode had copied nearly 20% of his dissertation. Babes-Bolyai University described Bode's work as "deeply flawed", but a national ethics committee subsequently cleared him.

The latest high-profile case concerns Justice Minister Radu Marinescu. In January 2026, Sercan alleged that he had 140 pages of his 247-page doctoral dissertation, defended at the University of Craiova in 2009.

Marinescu's Social Democrats backed him "without reservation" and accused Sercan of being an impostor. The university's ethics commission had not issued a decision more than 31 weeks after receiving the complaints, education news website Edupedu reported in August.

Marinescu left the government when the Social Democrats withdrew from the coalition in April, but was nominated again as justice minister by Prime Minister Luca Niculescu. Parliament approved the new minority government on October 20.

Sercan has investigated the doctoral qualifications of around 50 people, including ministers, university rectors, police chiefs, generals, prosecutors and judges. Her work prompted Romania's intelligence service to examine its own personnel, with as many as half of the doctorates reviewed found to contain plagiarism, she told the Global Investigative Journalism Network in 2022.

"Unfortunately it’s a national disease, people getting degrees that they do not deserve," said Paul Radu, co-founder of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, in the same interview.

Degrees caught in legal limbo

Serbia's Finance Minister Sinisa Mali has retained his doctorate despite repeated findings against his dissertation.

The University of Belgrade's ethics board concluded in November 2019 that Mali had "literally took over texts, or entire paragraphs, from the texts of other authors without listing the names of the authors", after weeks of student protests outside the rectorate.

The university senate annulled his doctorate in December 2019, but the Administrative Court overturned the decision on procedural grounds. The senate voided the degree again in December 2021, only for the court to order its restoration in March 2023, broadcaster N1 reported. Mali subsequently defended another doctorate at Slovakia's Technical University of Kosice in June 2023.

Slovakia has also been a source of academic integrity controversies. In 2020, the daily Dennik N found plagiarism in the dissertations of Prime Minister Igor Matovic, parliament speaker Boris Kollar and education minister Branislav Grohling.

Matovic admitted copying two books by Slovak economists in his master's dissertation, apologised and said he should lose his degree.

"I haven't looked at my diploma since 1998 and I will never do that again," he wrote on Facebook. He survived a no-confidence vote in July 2020.

Slovakia subsequently introduced legislation permitting degrees to be withdrawn for plagiarism, but it applies only to dissertations defended after 2020.

An investigation by T-invariant published on August 19 found that officials implicated in earlier cases had therefore retained their qualifications. They include intelligence chief Pavol Gaspar, whose 2011 master's thesis on corruption was found to contain extensive copying, and parliamentarian Marian Kery, whose dissertation allegedly reproduced another student's work almost verbatim.

"The practice of defending a dissertation in another country and then having the diploma nostrified at home is widespread in Eastern Europe and across the post-Soviet space," the investigation said.

Why plagiarism persists

Other countries have also struggled to impose meaningful penalties. Croatian science and education minister Pavo Barisic faced an ethics committee investigation in 2016. The committee found that he had reproduced text without attribution, but its conclusions were advisory and he remained in government.

In Bulgaria, Petar Iliev was nominated as deputy prime minister and interior minister in 2021 amid allegations that he had plagiarised a colleague's dissertation. Ukraine appointed Serhiy Shkarlet as acting education minister in 2020 despite evidence of plagiarism.

In Russia, the volunteer network Dissernet had identified around 5,600 suspected plagiarists by 2016, many of them officials and lawmakers. Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky retained his doctorate after the state attestation commission dropped its investigation that year.

Plagiarism scandals are not confined to the former communist bloc. Germany's defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned in 2011 after his university withdrew his doctorate, while education minister Annette Schavan stepped down in 2013 following a similar decision.

In a 2017 paper published in the European Review, political scientist Theodor Tudoroiu compared several high-profile cases, arguing that academic plagiarism by senior officials reflected broader weaknesses in governance.

He described it as "a direct, aggressive, and effective threat against democracy itself."

One factor behind the scandals is the prestige attached to academic titles. In countries where doctoral qualifications carry significant social and professional weight, politicians may see a doctorate as a means of demonstrating membership of an intellectual elite.

"The problem boils down to the fact that in much of central Europe too much attention is paid to academic titles and too little to what they should really be about: namely, making a substantial contribution to the field," Brian Bloch, a lecturer at the University of Munster, wrote in Times Higher Education in 2021.

"These are very powerful, and usually very wealthy people. They want to show with these PhDs that they also belong to the intellectual elite," Zoltan Sipos, founder of Romanian investigative outlet Atlatszo Erdely, told GIJN.

Financial incentives also play a role. In Romania, postgraduate qualifications can help officials secure promotions and higher salaries. The availability of ghostwriters and the possibility of obtaining degrees abroad can further weaken scrutiny.

The most important distinction, however, is enforcement. Political interference, weak ethics commissions, procedural challenges and laws that do not apply retrospectively have repeatedly prevented universities from imposing sanctions.

"When the [plagiarism] case concerns a politician, and especially a minister, it is obvious that these committees and commissions do not even have credibility in what they say," Octavian Voiculescu, a Romanian scientist at Cambridge University, told Science|Business in 2023.

Voiculescu said Romanian university graduates were increasingly viewed with suspicion abroad. Academics and students in Vienna, Leiden and Israel told Science|Business that tolerance of plagiarism was one reason they were reluctant to return home, despite a government programme offering more than €150mn to attract Romanian scientists back.

For Sinkevicius, the immediate consequence is a deadline to amend his dissertation rather than the loss of his doctorate or political office. He must correct the identified passages by the end of April, after which the work will undergo further scrutiny.

Sercan argues that academic records provide a rare means of holding powerful figures accountable.

"They can put their money into accounts in Switzerland and other countries, they can put their properties in the name of another person or their family, but they can’t hide their books or their doctoral dissertation," she told GIJN.