31 March, 2025 | Michalis Moutselos

Why did pandemic protests look different across Europe?

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with cities locked down and streets eerily quiet, one might have expected public protest would also be on pause. But across Europe, that silence didn’t last long. As restrictions tightened and the crisis dragged on, people found their voices and returned to the streets. But protest patterns did not look the same everywhere.

The research paper “Geographic variation in COVID-19 protests in the EU-27: Actors, grievances, and protest frames during a public health crisis” dives into this fascinating variation. Drawing on over 20,000 protest events across the EU-27 between 2020 and 2023, the analysis takes a distinctive approach: instead of relying on individual surveys, it uses a detailed protest-event dataset (from the comprehensive Armed Conflict Location and Event Data) and hand-codes each event to capture who was protesting, why, and how they framed their demands. The result is a portrait of pandemic protest in Europe—not just in national capitals, but across regions and political contexts.

Culture vs. Economy: A tale of two grievances

One of the study’s core analytical insights is the emergence of a divide in protest motivations: economic vs. cultural grievances.

Economic protests were primarily about livelihoods—wages, working conditions, business closures, and lack of state support. These protests emerged quickly in the early months of the pandemic, often led by trade unions, hospitality workers, or other directly affected professional groups. Southern Europe, with highly active labor movements and more fragile economies, saw particularly high levels of this kind of mobilization.

Cultural protests, on aggregate, came to the fore later in almost all European countries. These focused on personal freedoms, opposition to lockdowns and mask mandates, and, most notably, resistance to vaccine requirements. They were often fueled by broader skepticism toward scientific or technocratic authority, and were most common in countries like Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands—even before vaccines were available.

Political cleavages resurface—But not symmetrically

Protests weren’t evenly distributed across the political spectrum. Left-wing actors, particularly in Southern Europe, were active in organizing demonstrations around economic demands. Meanwhile, right-wing and radical-right actors were more likely to lead cultural protests, often using the language of individual freedom and government overreach.

Surprisingly, groups from the Green-Alternative-Libertarian (GAL) side of politics—environmentalists, progressive activists, and so on—were largely absent from street-level mobilization, except for counterdemonstrations in Germany. Their low visibility in the data suggests that many may have shifted their engagement online, worked through institutional channels during the crisis or simply were satisfied with the scientific consensus and government policy.

Also noteworthy is the strong presence of non-partisan actors: student groups, small business owners, healthcare professionals, and others who weren’t clearly aligned with political parties but had immediate stakes in the crisis. Their participation points to the pandemic’s reach beyond traditional ideological divides.

Geography Matters

Protest didn’t look the same across the EU. While Southern Europe leaned more heavily into economic grievances, countries in Northern Europe saw a greater emphasis on cultural issues—particularly individual freedom and skepticism of state intervention or the scientific consensus around it. Central and Eastern Europe generally recorded lower protest volumes, but when people did mobilize, the tone was often nationalist and anti-globalist, with some demonstrations drawing on conspiracy theories or religious themes.

Interestingly, centrist and technocratic governments—those not clearly aligned with either left or right, such as Emmanuel Macron’s government or Germany’s Grosse Koalition—faced disproportionately high levels of protest. This could reflect a perception of weaker political accountability or legitimacy in moments of crisis.

No Lasting “Rally Around the Flag”

One popular theory early in the pandemic was that crises unify people behind their governments—what is known “rally around the flag” effect in the literature. While there was some evidence of this in the very early months, the data show that protests picked up again surprisingly quickly. In particular, economic protests began just weeks after the first lockdowns, and cultural protests surged in late 2021 with the introduction of vaccine passes. If there was a rallying effect, it was short-lived.

Why Protest Frames Didn’t Always Align

Most protest movements stuck to one core issue: either economic or cultural. Only a few—like France’s gilets jaunes or the CGT trade union in the same country—managed to combine both, adapting their messaging over time. This “frame-bridging” is tricky. It requires linking very different kinds of demands—say, better working conditions and opposition to mandatory vaccination—without alienating parts of the movement. Many groups tried it; few succeeded.

Still, creative protest repertoires emerged across the continent. There were car parades, balcony pot-banging, “freedom convoys,” student sit-ins, and carnival-style street actions. Protesters found ways to make their presence known especially when they combined pandemic protests with preexisting political divides and repertoires.

This research offers a detailed and layered look at how protest unfolded during the pandemic across Europe. It shows that long-standing political cleavages didn’t disappear—they were reactivated in new ways under the pressure of the health crisis. Protest tactics also adapted to fit public health restrictions, and pre-existing regional patterns of protest culture clearly influenced how and why people mobilized. Rather than producing a single, unified wave of dissent across the EU-27, the pandemic gave rise to a fragmented and context-specific landscape of resistance shaped by time, place, and political cleavages.

This text summarizes some of the findings in the REGROUP paper “Geographic variation in COVID-19 protests in the EU-27: Actors, grievances, and protest frames during a public health crisis“.