The Fate of Europe: A Closer Look at the COVID-19 Unrest
Written by Ahmet S. Şakrak, Hande Genç , Jin Lee, Laura Ciamei, Luca van Leer, and Matija Vujnovic Kotaran
First Published on March 24, 2021 — Amsterdam, NL
As the Ebola outbreak and many other examples in the past showed us, humanity does not handle these types of threats in an efficient manner. While globalization through internet technologies enabled the fast spread of information, in the case of pandemic outbreaks, even the past warnings were not taken into consideration. Since December 31, 2019, when the first corona case was reported, up until today, in this article we are reporting on what will be the fate of Europe in the fight against the deadly virus. As in every pandemic outbreak, the World Health Organization did not know how the spread of the virus would unfold, at first, the limited available information caused a rapid increase of cases. Within the last one-year period, increasing measurements together with financial difficulties for many citizens caused an amplification in the spread of false information. From blaming the 5G towers to blaming pharmaceutical companies, the conspiracy theorists spread much false information online.
This issue in the online sphere is a well-known phenomenon that attracted much scholarly research as well. The spotlight has been on the tech giants, as the severity of the false information has increased day by day.
Looking at the last 6 months period, the echoes of false information, economic downturn, as well as fear of free speech limitation have all become the cornerstones of pandemic-related riots. While each European state has imposed its own regulatory restrictions, the increasing number of civil unrest makes the differences of European states apparent. It is unknown whether the recently being rolled out vaccine is going to reduce the impact in the uprising of Covid protesters. However, our data-powered article will show that while the protests are gradually increasing, the rhetoric around the cause of protests continues to evolve. In the “lost” year, emotional distress in many people dramatically increased, and the effects of the pandemic in the society became more apparent. In this article, we will be looking at the Covid case trends concerning the numbers of riots and civil unrest around Europe. We will show how European countries differ in the context of Covid related restrictions and the number of riots. Our aim is not to show boring bar charts, but placing the increasing number of riots in a context. While many people are locked in their homes, we do not really have a grasp of what is happening maybe even in the city that we live in. Then let us understand how it all started and what to expect next. Firstly, we begin by navigating through the data for this article.
Journey of the Data
The data visualizations that we used have been made in the data visualization software Tableau. In order to make these visualizations, multiple datasets were necessary and had to be compiled. For the Covid disorder, we made use of ACLEDDATA.com. This databank keeps track of all conflict data in the world and keeps records of which government party or protest group was involved. Through the use of their built-in data export tool, it was possible to make a dataset for Europe concerning the Covid disorder. The data can still have a chance of being flawed as it could be missing certain reports of protests.
Furthermore, owid.com (our world in data) was used in order to gather data concerning the total amount of Covid cases in Europe. The website had a large dataset for all Covid cases worldwide and other information about the spread of Covid-19, the dataset is updated every day in order to remain relevant.
After gathering the data it needs to be organized in Excel so that a link between both datasets is possible within Tableau. The linking of datasets together is the power of the software as it helps put in perspective problems and a direct ability to visualize these problems.
An Overall Look at Europe: Number of COVID-19 Cases and Protests
To understand how the Covid related protests emerged, we must first look at the Covid-19 cases in the major European countries. A selection of countries made on the basis of how many Covid related protests happened in these countries. As displayed on the bar chart, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy are the leading countries in the number of Covid cases. At this point, we want to point out that the number of Covid cases should also be considered in relation to the population of the country as well as population density. While the specific reasons for the upsurge in cases vary per country, we are wearing our “protester glasses” to see if the number of cases can give us a hint about why the unrest in Europe continues to escalate. As you may have already guessed, the increase in the numbers of cases does not really tell us the inner drives and motives of the public outrage. On the other side, each country imposed its own measures in combating the spread of the virus. This has a fundamental impact on how people perceive the rules that were imposed by each government due to many people and media organs making constant comparisons between the imposed rules. However, we will not touch that point just yet. As the timelines differ in each country’s example, for now, let’s just focus on the key countries, namely Spain and Netherlands. Just looking at the number of protests in these countries, makes it clear why these countries are the key for looking at the protests.
Spain by far experienced the most cases of civilian unrest even whilst having a high number of cases compared to the others. We already know that the cause of protests have different inner motives than being a critique of not having enough measurements. Considering that Spain sustains 13.5% of employment through tourism, Covid had an enormous impact on how people are supposed to maintain their lives while being locked in their house. Whilst economic reasons can be named as a contributor to the civilian unrest, it is not the sole reason. Looking at the Netherlands, we understand that Spain does not represent the bigger picture. The Netherlands continues to experience a significant portion of violent protests while the country follows relatively eased restrictions for a long time compared to others. The Netherlands seems to represent a distinct example compared to Spain, it appears that restrictions are the main cause of the unrest. Additionally France, Italy and including Greece, have been under public scrutiny in the last month. While our data showed the protests that emerged between January 31, 2021 — February 24, 2021, the main actors of the protests could be better understood by zooming in on countries as case-studies. After this general overview of the continent’s complicated situation, we need to ask more questions to understand Covid disorder. How did the number of riots change overtime? In which countries did the riots increase as a direct response to Covid restrictions?
First, we will look at the possible answers to these questions, then we will discuss our findings with Naomi di Meo who gave us an insightful interview on these issues.
How did the Covid-19 related protests spread in Europe?
We aimed to display how the coronavirus-related protests took place across Europe in less than two month; from December 31, 2020, to February 24, 2021. If you look at the map above, the first protests in France, the Netherlands, and Sweden began to take place simultaneously. Moreover, Britain, Ukraine, and Italy had unrest at the same time as Spain and Germany. The unrest spread through the UK, Greece, and Poland amid a series of protests and large-scale demonstrations that took place in France and Germany and expanded into Spain and Italy. Additionally, Ukraine also had sporadic protests, and the Netherlands was the country with the first and last to protest in the specific timeframe.
The rise in such steady demonstrations can’t be coincidental and is arguably the result of new government policies. We aim to fully understand these protests through analysis of the regulations in each country.
Spain, Italy, and France, are the most affected countries by Corona in the EU, who have implemented various regulations at the same time to minimize damage. However, they have continued to enforce strict rules since the second wave came last year. First, Spain announced that it would maintain a regional-restricted emergency until at least May 9. It is impossible to move from city to city, and bars and restaurants are closed, and only take-out is possible; Italy followed with very similar rules. However, Italy is divided into 20 regions to carry out a three-stage regional restriction system. Unlike Spain, cafes and bars are open, and more detailed regulations are being enforced. France enforces the strongest regulations of the three countries. People can’t go out after 6 p.m. since October, and they must have a specific certificate to go around during curfew. Unlike the aforementioned countries, Ukraine began enforcing stronger regulations on December 19, 2020. Cultural facilities are still open with a limited capacity. Cafes and restaurants may remain open until 10 p.m.
As these regulations continue to be enforced and extended, protests in each country are taking place for a multitude of reasons. In Spain, anti-corona protests were held in Madrid on January 23 after it was announced that the closure of bars and restaurants would be extended again until February 15. Despite the ever-increasing number of cases in Madrid, people have taken to the streets with slogans about continued labor unrest. Despite no announcement of new regulations, citizens from various fields tired of the lockdown situation came out on the streets in France. First there was a march supporting cultural workers in early January that led to a party without a mask. On January 26, students and teachers gathered to protest for additional financial support as they felt to be victims of Covid and its online classes. Additionally, on January 27, restaurants opened to show civil disobedience, centered on restaurant owners who suffered severe damage under the closure order that continued from 30 October.
Case Study: The Netherlands
“The first time such severe restrictions have been imposed since the Nazi occupation during the second World War” says Peter Cluskey for the Netherlands, and this could be one of the main contributors to the extensive unrest here.
Let’s have a closer look at the situation in the Netherlands where many changes occurred related to politics, education, social issues and health in the first two months of 2021. The Netherlands was one of the countries that the virus started spreading from among Europe. In the government website, it was announced that “the lockdown measures were tightened in response to the concerns about new variants of virus” on January 20, 2021. The Dutch government announced the new measures after the The Health and Social Care Secretary spoke to the House of Commons about the new variant of coronavirus in the UK on December 14, 2020. The Netherlands implemented strict restrictions such as the curfew from 20.30 to 4.30 with the indication that it would last until at least February 9, 2021. The application took place two weeks after the information about the new variant was announced in the UK. It may seem even slow and late to you, but the Dutch people did not respond that optimistic about the restrictions. As soon as the restrictions were implemented, the Covid-19 related protests started escalating. As it can be seen in the bar chart, the protests peaked on January 23 and February 9 in Europe.
After three days that the Dutch government announced the new measures, the first peak in protests took place on Saturday January 23. Isabel Baneke and Stefan Keukenkamp wrote in their journalistic article about the possible causes of the protests as the resignation of Rutte and his entire Cabinet which took place on January 15, the retirement age, the teacher shortage and the detection of pedophiles. “And the disproportionate corona rules are the icing on the cake,” says Reijinga, the organizer of the protest. It shows how the increase in protests were not only Covid-19 related but instead that new restrictions were a stimulant that sparked off the unrest.
Although the demonstration ‘Cabinet Rutte Geen Meer’ was canceled, protesters still came to the Museumplein in Amsterdam on Sunday. The situation quickly got out of hand when they refused to go home. Image by Joris van Gennip
Protesting on a Saturday is more usual since there would be more participants, but then what happened on February 9 Tuesday in the Netherlands? The Dutch government announced the extension of curfew on February 8 Monday until March 3. Peter has stated that the government thought the snow storm would discourage the protests caused by the extension of curfew, but the storm did not prevent the nationwide riots against Covid.
Interview with Naomi di Meo
Now here is the turning point of this article, our true Eureka moment. We hosted an interview with Naomi Di Meo, a young aspiring journalist and active political activist with a background in political science, which left us in awe and admiration. Naomi has organized and spoken at several political movements and speaks out on various media platforms. We asked Naomi five questions regarding recent protests in Europe, on which she gave us a fresh and deeper perspective to our research.
We firstly asked: “considering the developments within the last year, what do you believe is the main motivation behind the protests that sparked around Europe?” To this, Naomi turned our attention to the recent rise of political unrest due to “an advancement of populism in many European governments.” She elaborates that many national parties aim to make an enemy out of a common threat, like the issue of abortion rights in Poland, and says that “people in power don’t want to negotiate because then they lose power, so average people just have to keep fighting.” Naomi then blames the spread of fake news as a main culprit amongst all protests, “the media twists the idea of these topics and antagonizes these things to create fear of progress, it just makes people angrier and more confused and continues to create problems.”
Moving on, we asked Naomi, “considering that pandemic outbreaks were always part of the European History, what makes the contemporary outbreak different than before?” Her answer for this one really provided a deeper perspective. Naomi reminded us that “outbreaks are nothing new around the world” and uses the outbreak of Ebola in Gabon as an example. The one major difference that she highlights is “that now there is a virus hitting Western countries. So now that countries in Europe are involved, it’s apparently new and you have people actually be concerned that there is a virus going around. When the virus isn’t involving Western people then no one bothers to go out and say anything against it or inform others about it, but obviously when it hits them then it becomes a problem”, explaining the increase of protests around Europe. By bringing this to our attention, Naomi reminded us that anti-covid driven protests in Europe are highly driven by privileges and liberties that many other nations are stripped of. Whereas nations such as the Netherlands have the full advantage of being able to carry on with these protests, places like Gabon are suffering battling a virus that appears nonexistent to the rest of the world.
Then we asked her: “to what extent do you believe spread of misinformation has a role in the development of unrest in European countries?” As discussed earlier, Naomi heavily blames the media for complicating and igniting many of these unrests. Digging deeper into political concepts, she discusses how “European countries are shifting towards the far right political environment because of the spread of misinformation.” Governments use the media to spread their cynical ideologies, as seen in recent news like the ban of the hijab or burka in Switzerland. She concludes the argument saying that “these governments use the media to spread their hateful ideologies and it gives them a great advantage, it’s exactly like Nazis propaganda but masked so people don’t really see it, but it’s there.”
We continued by asking “compared to a non-European context, do we see a different expectation in Europe in terms of the government’s role in preventing the spread of the virus?” Naomi answered by targeting the European ‘We are Europe nothing will happen to us’ attitude, causing them to be too proud at the beginning stages of Corona. She thinks Europe should have taken examples from Asian countries, such as Singapore, and be more severe with their regulations, leading to promising results. Alongside the government, people are also to blame for responding poorly to the set measures and delaying any progress.
To conclude we asked Naomi: “do you think the fact that people are protesting against Covid-19 measurements could be justified in regards to their ideologies?” Her response was straightforward and simple, stating that “obviously people have their own beliefs and ideologies towards different things, and often these are supported by different facts or by studies that were made, but anti-Corona beliefs and one’s view of life are not proven scientifically, they are just opinions. So it does not make sense to me to justify a person who behaves outrageously and revolts for a nonsensical reason.”
This interview with Naomi Di Meo extensively contributed to making sense of our research. It tied our findings together towards a thought provoking message on privilege, manipulation of the media and power abuses that we hope all our readers can ponder over and act on.
What awaits us?
After carefully analyzing all the information and data both online and in this paper, we can come to several important conclusions. Firstly, according to the analyzed data, the protests and riots will continue in European countries that impose or will impose strict measures on their citizens. As earlier stated, countries most faced with Corona are the ones imposing stricter measures. Each further increase as well as a delayed decrease in terms of measures will be met with more resistance from the citizens. This leads to a situation where the government has to set measures against the spread of Covid-19, while also taking into account how the measures affect their citizens’ lives and how strict measures can trigger riots and protests that possibly lead to a rise in Covid-19 cases altogether. Some European countries such as the Netherlands are believed to protest the measures because these are the first severe restrictions imposed since WW2, implying an attack on their Democracy. However, these recurring protests demonstrate the privilege and liberty of Europeans that many other nations are deprived of. Although the pandemic has greatly affected our ordinary lifestyles, we must remain aware of nations that have been battling various diseases and with less resources or facilities for years long before Covid-19. Outrageous protests will only continue to hinder our progress towards restoring normality.
