This autumn, we call on students and young people across Europe to rise up, strike and mobilise on November 20.

The world is on fire

The world we are growing up in is shaped by a system that ignores people’s needs. The exploitation of workers, climate breakdown and war are not failures of the system but the essence of capitalism. The rise of militarization, authoritarianism and the dismantling of the welfare state are not separate problems but all symptoms of a crisis of global capitalism.

Military spending is reaching historic highs while education, healthcare, housing and public services are sacrificed to finance rearmament. Programs such as ReArm Europe (which aims to invest 800 billion euros), the expansion of military alliances like NATO and growing calls for conscription are preparing our generation for war instead of guaranteeing our future. NATO does not defend peace; it has repeatedly advanced imperial interests through military intervention, escalation and the protection of geopolitical and economic power – and because of this should be dissolved.

Western imperialism, spearheaded by the Trump administration in the US, is imposing rearmament plans that are fanatically applauded by the European ruling class and supported by conservative and far-right governments in Europe and around the world.

But it is not just reactionary forces; this militaristic spiral has also found enthusiastic support among various social-democratic governments that have approved record military budgets.

From Palestine to Sudan, from Lebanon to Iran, from Venezuela to Cuba, peoples across the world continue to suffer imperial attacks – occupations, military interventions, sanctions, colonial domination and genocide carried out in the name of geopolitical and economic interests.

Youth and working class pay the price

Militarisation is entering our schools and universities through military recruitment, arms-funded research and partnerships with institutions complicit in war and genocide. It normalises violence, reinforces patriarchal structures and strengthens the far right, while governments insist there is no alternative and sell us the fairy tale of “defence” to justify it all. But we know that rearmament does not prevent but rather escalates conflicts.

We reject that future.

We fight for education free from military interests. We fight to abolish both voluntary and mandatory military service. We fight for public investment in schools, healthcare, housing and climate justice instead of weapons and war. We fight for a rapid and just transition beyond fossil fuels, led by the workers, where no one is left behind; for international solidarity instead of imperial domination, and the right of every people to determine their own future free from occupation and colonialism.

The struggle against militarisation is inseparable from the struggle against the economic system that sustains it. The struggle for oil, gas and strategic resources continues to drive wars, occupations and colonial violence, while fossil corporations, arms companies and financial institutions profit from destruction and displacement.

This logic of endless extraction does not only fuel war. It also drives climate breakdown. As governments continue expanding fossil fuels and military spending, communities across the world face deadly heatwaves, floods, fires and hunger. Climate collapse is not an accident but the result of political choices, just as militarisation is.

These priorities are not accidental; they are choices being made in international forums where political and economic elites protect military and fossil interests while presenting them as inevitable. Whether through military summits, the G7 or climate negotiations, like COP, which has been an instrument for the greenwashing of fossil capital. Our future continues to be sacrificed for profit and geopolitical power.

We will fight back

Our struggle is international because the system threatening our future, exploiting and suppressing us is international. Arms industries, military alliances, financial institutions and fossil corporations operate across borders. Our resistance must do the same.

Students and young people have always played a decisive role in changing the course of history, by standing on the side of the working class and its revolutionary force. From anti-colonial struggles to movements against war and dictatorship, generations before us showed that when students and youth organise and fight, society moves. Over the past year, students across Europe and beyond have organised walkouts, strikes and coordinated actions against genocide, militarisation, conscription and fossil imperialism.

Our future will not be given to us. Now it is time to escalate.

On November 20, students and young people across Europe will strike. We will leave our classrooms, organise assemblies, walkouts, actions and demonstrations.

We call on student and youth organisations across Europe to join this strike. We call on trade unions and social movements to stand with us and mobilise from 20 to 22 of November.