EU Rules Lock in Generational Inequality

European fiscal architecture, from Maastricht constraints to pension funding arrangements, systematically channels wealth and social spending toward older cohorts and asset holders, making generational transfers a structural feature rather than an accident. This institutionalized transfer amplifies youth precarity across jobs, housing and services, producing cross‑border political backlash among millennials and Gen Z. — If true, it shifts policy debate from intergenerational moralizing to concrete institutional reforms (fiscal rules, pension design, housing policy) with electoral stakes across Europe.