Italian students’ tent protests win attention but not action

Students in Italy have pitched tents in city centres to protest rising living costs and the government’s use of European Union recovery funding, facing criticism from the prime minister and threats by fascist thugs.

The campaign began in May when student Ilaria Lamera pitched a tent outside Politecnico di Milano to protest high rents in the city. Protests spread nationwide in a few weeks, supported by the national student union UDU, which expanded the campaign with a 10-point manifesto including calls for more student halls, rent freezes and more grants for those in the private sector.

After a summer hiatus the camping campaign returned in late September, now including concerns about the misspending of EU recovery funds by the Italian government, such as the mislabelling of existing accommodation as additional, and the high proportion of funding going to private landlords who charge market rents to students.

The UDU wrote to the European Commission over the summer to highlight both issues, earning a public rebuke from prime minister Giorgia Meloni, who questioned the students’ loyalty to Italy in a television interview.

The Italian government asked EU officials to postpone and amend one of its agreed targets for recovery funding, from the number of new places in student accommodation to the awarding of contracts for providing the places, with other EU countries agreeing to the change in September.

A commission spokesperson told Times Higher Education it was assessing the country’s progress towards fulfilling that goal and noted that the “overall objective” was to make student beds available, including by “incentivising private operators”.

Lisa Schivalocchi and Simone Agutoli, the UDU’s leads on internationalisation and housing, said they had yet to receive a promised response to the letter, which was addressed to commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

They said tent protests were still going on in Rome and Milan. While the actions had not won concessions from the national government, some cities and regions had spoken with UDU branches about their concerns.

Italy’s minister for universities, Anna Maria Bernini, acknowledged their grievances but had not rebudgeted in response, Mr Agutoli said. Concerns also persist about a national shortfall in scholarship funding, he added.

Aside from the ire of ministers, the tent protests have also faced attacks from the far right. Marzia Giovannelli, a student at the University of Turin, was among those threatened in the middle of the night by three men armed with a knife, who tried to pull down a banner and stole flags.

“They came to us with a blade saying, ‘You don’t have to call anybody otherwise we’re going to kill you.’ Then they did the Roman [salute] and started saying things about fascism and how we were communists,” she told THE.

After reporting the incident to police, the students were told the men were known far-right student activists. Mr Agutoli said the UDU had asked the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research to denounce the attack publicly, but officials had not done so.

The Turin students protested about the incident, but Ms Giovannelli said they had been reluctant to continue afterwards. “We weren’t super-secure about staying there any more,” she said, adding that the university had agreed to distribute a student-written survey on accommodation issues.

The UDU branches have small protests planned in the run-up to international students’ day on 17 November, Ms Schivalocchi said, when the union will organise coordinated actions nationwide.

ben.upton@timeshighereducation.com