Libya’s youth are filling the void Europe helped create

For Europe, Libya has long been treated less as a neighbouring society than as a recurring emergency. When migration flows spike, energy routes wobble, or armed groups clash, European capitals scramble to contain the fallout. What Europe has consistently failed to do, however, is support the emergence of a legitimate Libyan political order capable of sustaining itself.

Video of the 3rd January march in Tripoli.

Recent youth-led mobilization in Tripoli exposes the cost of that failure.

On 3 January, hundreds of young Libyans marched in the capital in support of national unity and constitutional legitimacy, responding directly to a national address by Crown Prince Mohammed el-Senussi. Organised by youth groups and civil society networks, the march explicitly backed a return to the 1951 Independence Constitution and the constitutional monarchy it established.

That hundreds mobilised despite restrictions on public gatherings is itself significant. The importance of the march lies not only in who participated, but in what they demanded: legitimacy, continuity, and an end to Libya’s permanent state of transition. For European policymakers, this moment should be unsettling—because Europe helped create the vacuum Libyan youth are now trying to fill.
Italy and France: Two strategies, one failure
Over the past decade, Italy and France have pursued competing—and mutually undermining—Libya policies. Rome prioritised migration containment, striking transactional arrangements with local power brokers to reduce departures across the central Mediterranean. Paris pursued a security-first strategy, backing preferred political and military actors under the banner of counterterrorism and “stability.” Neither approach addressed legitimacy.
Together, they ensured its absence.

Italy treated Libya as a buffer zone rather than a state, outsourcing border control to fragmented authorities while ignoring institutional decay. France elevated selected actors while sidelining inclusive political processes, further weakening an already fragile national consensus. The predictable result was a divided political landscape, rival centres of power, and institutions devoid of public trust.

This was not a coordination failure—it was a strategic contradiction. Europe spoke of unity while acting unilaterally. It demanded elections without a constitutional foundation. It promoted dialogue while empowering actors whose influence depended on fragmentation. Libya’s youth are now responding to the consequences.

The UN’s role: Institutionalizing the wrong incentives

Europe’s failures were compounded—and in many respects structurally enabled—by the United Nations’ approach to Libya. Over a decade of UN-led mediation created conditions in which corrupt, unrepresentative actors flourished, while genuine social constituencies, particularly youth, were excluded.

This dynamic was embedded in successive UN frameworks. The 2015 Skhirat Agreement prioritised elite consensus over public consent, producing institutions that lacked legitimacy from inception. The Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF) in 2020–21 deepened this model by selecting interim authorities through opaque bargaining rather than constitutional mandate. The resulting Government of National Unity was internationally recognised without elections, constitutional approval, or a clear expiry mechanism.

Each process postponed Libya’s foundational constitutional question. Each rewarded proximity to power, money, or foreign sponsors over representation. And each reinforced a political economy in which permanent transition was more profitable than resolution.

The outcome was not state-building, but a political marketplace—one in which legitimacy was externalised and accountability dissolved.

A generational rejection of endless 'processes'

In recent months, a series of civic gatherings laid the groundwork for the January mobilisation. In mid-November, nearly one thousand Libyans convened in Tripoli for the National Meeting for Unity and Peace, one of the largest public forums in years focused on constitutional legitimacy. A national women’s conference followed, then a youth conference in early December.

Across these forums, a consistent conclusion emerged: post-2011 political pathways have failed, and legitimacy must be rebuilt from Libya’s original constitutional foundation.

This is a generational judgment. More than half of Libya’s population is under 30. They have no nostalgia for monarchy, no attachment to pre-1969 politics, and no patience for elite bargaining. What they do have is lived experience of institutional collapse, corruption, and exclusion.

Their turn toward the 1951 Constitution is pragmatic, not sentimental.

Drafted under United Nations supervision and adopted at independence, it established representative institutions, separation of powers, and judicial independence. It granted women political rights earlier than several European states, including Switzerland, and protected religious and ethnic minorities. Libya functioned—imperfectly but recognisably—as a unified state.

Crucially, constitutional scholars, including experts consulted in the United States, note that the constitution was never formally abolished through a lawful national process. It was suspended, not replaced. This gives today’s youth-led demand a legal coherence many externally designed European roadmaps have lacked.

Why this matters for Europe now

Europe cannot continue to treat Libya as a technical problem while ignoring legitimacy. Migration pressure, energy insecurity, and security threats are symptoms. The disease is the absence of a political order Libyans believe in.

Italy’s deals and France’s unilateral interventions may have served short-term national interests, but they undermined Europe’s long-term strategic position. They fractured EU coherence, weakened credibility, and entrenched instability along Europe’s southern flank.

Libya’s youth are not protesting Europe—but they are exposing its failure.

The mobilisation in Tripoli is not a call for foreign endorsement or imposed solutions. It is a demand for recognition: recognition that legitimacy cannot be engineered externally, negotiated endlessly, or postponed indefinitely. Europe’s own history offers parallels. Spain’s post-Franco constitutional restoration and Latvia’s reinstatement of its pre-Soviet constitution were grounded in continuity, not reinvention.

For the European Union, the choice is stark. Continue managing fragmentation—or support legitimacy when it finally emerges from within.

Ignoring a youth-led constitutional moment because it does not fit existing diplomatic scripts would repeat the very mistakes Europe helped entrench. Taking it seriously would signal that Europe has finally learned that stability follows legitimacy—not the other way around.

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