We guarantee housing, we strengthen democracy

No one can doubt that we are living in exceptional times. In recent weeks, the need to develop a European defense policy in the face of Putin's threat on our eastern borders has become clear. Both the President of the European Commission and the heads of state and government of the major EU countries have expressed the need to increase defense spending using all available mechanisms: from joint debt issuance to the relaxation of fiscal rules.

But the threat from Putin's Russia, amplified by the alienation and disdain of Trump's United States, is not the only danger facing the European Union. European democracies face another adversary, one that is internal and no less dangerous: the social emergency caused by the lack of decent and affordable housing, especially in large cities.

The housing crisis poses a double challenge. First, it directly challenges democracy itself. Because the failure to guarantee the right to housing can call into question the ability of democratic institutions to meet citizens' basic needs. We cannot allow this to happen, especially as the extreme right advances in Europe and around the world. Today, guaranteeing housing means defending democracy.

The housing crisis also challenges the European project and its founding promise. The EU was born as a project of peace and has grown as a project of well-being. Today, that well-being requires guaranteeing the right to housing for all Europeans. Failure to do so, failing to rise to the demands of this grave moment, will only benefit the authoritarian far-right populisms that are rising everywhere.

Faced with this emergency, European cities have united to push for a change in the rules of the game at all levels, from local to EU governments. This is the message that 13 European cities, including Paris, Rome, and Budapest, at the urging of Barcelona, ​​conveyed to the EU institutions at a recent working day in Brussels. It is also the message I shared at the Annual Forum of the European Investment Bank, the EU's main financial institution.

This change in the rules of the game must be translated into concrete measures: we have proposed that public spending on housing not be included in the deficit rules, just as states have proposed for defense spending. This makes particular sense in countries like ours where the percentage of public housing stock is much lower than the European average. The logic is obvious: if we are living in exceptional times for defense, we are also living in exceptional times for housing.

In Barcelona, we embody this change in two principles: treating housing as a social infrastructure, as the fifth pillar of the welfare state, and giving it a universal character, that is, ensuring that every citizen has the recognized and fully guaranteed right to decent and affordable housing. That's why we're implementing a series of pioneering measures in Spain, such as price caps on regular rentals, and advocating for others, such as limiting short-term rentals. At the same time, we're implementing pioneering measures in the world, such as the abolition of all tourist apartment licenses, scheduled in Barcelona for 2028.

To overcome the housing crisis, new solutions are needed at all levels: from Barcelona to Brussels, including Madrid. This must be the mandate of housing in Europe, and cities must be active protagonists of this change. We are living in exceptional times that require exceptional measures. And we cannot, and we have no right, to rest easy.