Conditional Democrats: Youth, Institutions, and Governance Risk Across Europe

What Is Happening

Across Europe, political engagement among young people is moving away from conventional channels and toward protest, online mobilisation, and issue-based coalitions.

Youth voter turnout in the 2024 European Parliament elections fell to 36% in the 15 to 24 age group — down six points from 2019. In national elections the gap is wider still, with an average of nearly 60% of eligible voters not voting. These numbers may read as evidence of disengagement, but they are not. The European Parliament’s Youth Survey found that 42% of young Europeans signed a petition in 2021, 24% joined street protests, and 85% discussed politics regularly. Yet party membership across the continent sits at around 5%. Formal political structures are failing to convert political interest into political action.

36% Youth voting rate, 2024 EU elections (age 15–24) Eurobarometer post-electoral survey, 2024

42% Signed a petition in the previous year EP Youth Survey, 2021

5% Young Europeans who are party members Council of Europe, Yurttagüler & Pultar, 2023

Why It Is Happening

The austerity generation

The 2008 financial crisis and the austerity decade that followed left a specific mark on political attitudes across Southern and Eastern Europe. Governments under fiscal pressure implemented conditions set in Brussels or by the IMF (cutbacks to public services, labour market reforms, pension changes) with little meaningful democratic input. For those that grew up watching that process, trust in the political system may never have fully formed in the first place.

Housing and the economics of the next generation

While employment has improved across much of Europe, this has not delivered the economic security it once implied. Increasingly in Southeast Europe, under-35s face housing costs that make independent living marginal and homeownership inaccessible. The sense that this generation could end up poorer than the last, regardless of effort or qualification, is the most consistent driver of political radicalisation in the region.

COVID and the quality of governance

The pandemic made government decision-making impossible to ignore. PMC research drawing on cross-national data found that young people who experienced COVID under governments who were unable to respond effectively showed measurably lower institutional trust. It also accelerated the shift toward social media as the primary outlet for youth political dissatisfaction.

Politics formed on social media

According to Eurostat data, 84% of young EU citizens used social media in 2022. The Eurobarometer News and Media Survey confirmed that younger Europeans access political information through social platforms more than through any other source. The consequence is a political environment that is faster, more emotionally responsive, and less mediated by institutional filters — one that has benefitted political actors who understand platform dynamics.

The Trust Deficit and Where It Is Going

The TUI Foundation and YouGov’s Young Europe Survey 2024 polled 6,703 respondents aged 16 to 26 across France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the UK. Fifty-seven percent said they preferred democracy to any other system of government. Twenty-one percent said they would support an authoritarian government under certain circumstances. Only 6% across the full sample believed their political system was functioning well.

57% Gen Z prefer democracy to any other system TUI Foundation / YouGov, 2024 (n=6,703)

21% Open to authoritarian rule TUI Foundation / YouGov, 2024

6% Believe their political system functions well TUI Foundation / YouGov, 2024

The European Election Study 2024 found that younger voters across Europe are less supportive of liberal democratic norms than older voters, and are more likely to vote for far-right parties, a pattern that did not exist in 2019. In Germany, the AfD tripled its under-25 vote share between 2019 and 2024, from around 5% to 16%. France's Rassemblement National took 32% of the under-34 vote — ten points higher than five years earlier. In Poland, the Confederation party went from 18.5% to 30% among under-30 voters.

The preference for democracy is becoming more conditional, and the electoral consequences are already visible. The EES 2024 finding that the youth far-right correlation is strongest where far-right parties are already in government carries a specific warning: democratic backsliding, once underway, reduces the institutional resistance of the very people most likely to reverse it.

In Southeast Europe and the Western Balkans, these dynamics take on a sharper form. Greece’s governing Nea Dimokratia party saw its youth vote fall from 28.8% among 17 to 24-year olds in June 2023 to 16.1% a year later. The vote dispersed across the ideological range, from the Communist KKE to the Elliniki Lysi. In the Western Balkans, the EIU Democracy Index 2023 classifies all six non-EU countries as either flawed democracies or hybrid regimes. The Balkan Barometer 2024 found that corruption and inflation have displaced unemployment as young people's primary concerns. This cannot be addressed by economic growth alone.

Image: European Parliament

In Serbia, a November 2024 infrastructure collapse linked to governance failures under a Chinese Belt and Road contract triggered the largest civic mobilisation in the country’s modern history. By Spring 2025, trust in the EU among Serbian citizens had fallen to 37% — the lowest among Western Balkan accession countries. The gap the EU is failing to fill is being noticed by others.

The 6% of young Europeans who believe their political system currently functions well is not a polling anomaly. It is a measure of the distance between what democratic institutions promise and what they deliver. In Southeast Europe and the Western Balkans, that distance is widest and it is closing in a direction that carries consequences for the broader region.