Illa calls on Brussels to intervene in the housing market

Barcelona/BrusselsSalvador Illa has returned to Brussels. He maintains a busy international agenda and this week will be the fourth time that, as president of the Generalitat, he travels to the Belgian capital. The two most notable meetings he is expected to hold on Wednesday will be with the President of the European Council, António Costa, and the Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition, Teresa Ribera, according to sources from the Catalan executive.

From the community capital, Illa has advocated for the need to intervene in the housing market. Just as governments did not hesitate to intervene in the free market during the 2008 crisis to bail out banks or during the Covid crisis, the Catalan president has argued that public intervention is necessary to ensure that economic growth translates into well-being for society as a whole. "If it was done during the 2008 crisis, during the Covid-19 pandemic, or the energy crisis derived from the war in Ukraine, why is it not done now?", he questioned. "Generating prosperity has a first and last name: access to housing", he insisted. Illa will have the opportunity to address this issue this Wednesday with the European Parliament's Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on Housing.

During a conversation with former Minister of Economy and academic Andreu Mas-Colell at an event organized by the Prensa Ibérica group, Illa defended an economic model based on a regulated market economy, capable of generating wealth and, at the same time, guaranteeing social rights. "An economy that enriches us is a regulated market economy", he stated, and he claimed that this model allows for the support of services such as public healthcare, pensions, and decent living conditions.

Illa, who is scheduled to speak at the plenary session of the Committee of the Regions, an advisory body representing regional and municipal administrations of the EU, has revived the call for federalism. He has advocated for a Europe with greater economic capacity for action in which regions strengthen cooperation between European institutions and territories. Among other leaders, the President of the European Council and the Commissioner for Cohesion, Raffaele Fitto, will participate.

Other trips

Shortly after taking office, the leader of the PSC chose to visit the Belgian capital, where he met with the President of the European Parliament, the conservative Roberta Metsola, and participated in a plenary session of the Committee of the Regions. He traveled accompanied by the Minister for the European Union and Foreign Action, Jaume Duch, who was the spokesperson for the same European parliamentary chamber.

Later, three months on, Illa traveled to the Belgian capital again to meet—as on this occasion—with the main socialist leaders of the community institutions, Costa and Ribera. Then, as now, for the Government, one of the main topics on the discussion table at the European institutions was the official status of Catalan in the European Union. The initiative, however, remains stalled and has not yet obtained the approval of the twenty-seven member states of the European bloc.

The third time the President of the Generalitat traveled to Brussels, he met with former president Carles Puigdemont at the headquarters of the Delegation of Catalonia to the European Union. This time, although the return of the Junts leader is expected soon, government sources indicate that no meeting between the leader of the PSC and the leader of Junts is planned.