This Tuesday, the European Parliament will definitively ratify, after more than a year of negotiations and procedures, its strategic framework to address the housing crisis affecting the European continent. It is a text that, despite not being legally binding, aims to serve as a political guide for the design and implementation of future community initiatives on housing over the coming months.
The document also bears a Spanish seal, since the report has been prepared by the Member of the European Parliament from the Popular Party Borja Giménez, who places the insufficiency of residential supply as the main structural cause of the current situation in the European real estate market.
A diagnosis based on scarcity, prices, and inequality
The European Parliament's internal investigations point to the fact that the housing crisis in the Union is explained through different interrelated factors. Among them stand out the scarcity of available housing, the sustained escalation of prices and the social impact derived from inadequate housing conditions.
According to the parliamentary analysis, these effects have a disproportionate impact on certain groups, such as migrant people, young people, single women, or families in a situation of economic vulnerability. For these groups, access to decent housing has progressively become one of the main obstacles to social inclusion and economic stability.
A European plan to boost affordable housing
The approved text comes from the Special Committee on the Housing Crisis established by the European Parliament with the specific objective of analyzing the phenomenon and formulating policy recommendations. The report has received the support of the main political families of the European Parliament —populars, socialists, liberals, and conservatives—, which reflects a broad institutional consensus on the need to act.
Among its main proposals is the creation of a European Affordable Housing Plan, which would combine a drive to boost the construction of public housing with mechanisms aimed at fostering private investment, especially through tax incentives and administrative simplification measures.
Less bureaucracy and more agility in permits
The report that the Parliament will now send to the European Commission also calls for reducing the regulatory burden on the construction sector and accelerating administrative procedures for granting urban planning licenses. According to MEPs, excessive bureaucracy is acting as a structural brake on the increase in housing production.
One of the points that has generated the most debate during the drafting of the document has been that related to property rights. Finally, the text proposes strengthening the protection of owners against illegal occupation, while also demanding guaranteeing conditions of stability and legal certainty for tenants.
The role of the States and local authorities
In December, the Community Executive already presented its own preliminary plan, which granted to the Member States of the European Union the main responsibility of designing national strategies aimed at reducing the excess administrative procedures faced by developers and builders.
This approach will foreseeably be accompanied by a reform in the system of European aid destined for housing. Along these same lines, the European Parliament proposes strengthening the role of local authorities, which are the administrations with most direct access to financing instruments and to the practical implementation of urban policies. The objective is to facilitate solutions adapted to the particularities of each territory.
In order to increase the availability of housing in the market, the report proposes reviewing all those regulations that may be hindering the construction of new properties. Likewise, it proposes promoting the renovation and rehabilitation of the existing housing stock, especially in those buildings that do not comply with adequate habitability or energy efficiency standards.
This strategy would also involve harmonizing various community regulations that currently generate regulatory overlaps, which, according to Parliament, causes administrative delays and additional costs for developers.
The positive administrative silence
Among the concrete measures proposed by the document is the possibility that member states establish a maximum period of sixty days for the granting of housing construction permits.
Likewise, it is proposed to introduce the principle of positive administrative silence, so that, if the administration does not respond within the established period, the authorization to start the works is considered automatically granted.
The report also opens the door to the reconversion of underutilized public buildings, attics or disused urban spaces into public or social housing, with the aim of taking advantage of existing real estate assets to expand the housing supply.
The European Parliament also considers that administrations must be able to mobilize available public land, review urban zoning regulations and map all those industrial areas currently abandoned or underutilized.
These areas could be transformed into new residential spaces through urban regeneration projects, supported by instruments such as the so-called “passports for industrial zones”, which would facilitate their administrative and urbanistic reconversion.
Tax reforms to facilitate access to housing
In the fiscal sphere, the report approved by the European Parliament proposes to reform the European VAT Directive to allow Member States to apply super-reduced tax rates to the construction, renovation, and rental of residential housing when these are integrated within social housing policies.
The measure would be accompanied by tax incentives aimed at owners who incorporate empty homes into the long-term rental market.
For the first-time buyers, one of the groups most affected by the housing crisis, the report proposes tax exemptions on certain real estate transactions, especially aimed at young people accessing property for the first time.
In the chapter dedicated to financing, the European Parliament advocates for attracting long-term private investment as a complement to public resources. This strategy is framed within the project of consolidating the Savings and Investment Union, which aims to facilitate the mobilization of cross-border capital within the European market.
The MEPs also request to strengthen the financing of existing European programs, such as the cohesion funds, InvestEU or the Recovery and Resilience Facility, to support projects related to housing.
Among the recommendations highlights the creation of a minimum budget of twenty billion euros aimed at guaranteeing access to adequate housing for boys and girls in the European Union.
Illegal occupation and regulation of tourist rentals
The resolution to be approved this Tuesday also includes an explicit condemnation of the illegal occupation of homes. In this regard, the Parliament asks Member States to establish rapid legal mechanisms to recover property and ensure the effective enforcement of eviction orders.
In parallel, the report addresses the phenomenon of short-term rentals, which in numerous European cities has reduced the supply of residential housing. Therefore, the European Commission is asked to present a legislative initiative that allows balancing the impact of tourism with the habitability of cities.
This framework would allow local councils to establish proportional licensing systems for this type of accommodation, adapted to the characteristics of each local market.
More legislation for housing
The European Commission activated last week a public consultation with the objective of gathering proposals for the future European affordable housing law.
Although for the moment the exact date of presentation of this regulation is not known, the objective is that it complements the plan announced in December and establishes a regulatory framework that allows cities to identify areas with special tension in the residential market.
Among the measures that Brussels is studying is precisely the legislative proposal on short-term rentals demanded by the European Parliament. The objective is to safeguard housing affordability in those areas where the expansion of these accommodations makes access to permanent residences difficult.
As an innovative element, the report also puts on the table the promotion of industrial prefabrication in the construction sector. According to the estimates collected in the document, the industrialization of construction processes could reduce building times by between 20% and 50%, in addition to contributing to reducing costs and improving the energy efficiency of new homes.
Should the strategy proposed by Giménez be fulfilled, young Europeans could benefit from new tools to access housing. Among them are low-interest loans, specific emancipation programs, and the creation of a European student accommodation model.
In an interview with Democrat, the author of the report, Borja Giménez, stressed that the main structural problem of the European real estate market is the sustained increase in prices, largely caused by the insufficiency of available housing. “The problem is that, with current construction rates, a deficit of approximately one hundred thousand homes is being generated each year,” affirmed the MEP.
Since the beginning of the negotiations, Giménez has argued that the increase in supply must be supported by both the public and private sectors. In this context, he attributes a relevant role to the European Investment Bank, which could facilitate financing for housing projects.
The popular MEP maintains that the magnitude of the crisis demands mobilizing all available resources. “To face the crisis, the action of public administrations is not enough. We have to involve the private sector, which for different reasons is not investing enough,” he summarized at the beginning of the parliamentary discussions on the first packages of amendments to the text.
The vision of the real estate sector
For their part, representatives of the real estate sector have long been demanding from the European institutions a clear regulatory framework based on good practices.
The spokesperson for the real estate portal Fotocasa defended in statements to Demócrata the need for a report capable of marking a roadmap for public housing policies.
“Legislation is being passed without consensus among all involved parties, and that only slows down access to housing,” he argued, insisting that cooperation between administrations, developers, and the financial sector will be key to resolving the housing crisis in Europe.