Cry for help in the EU from Barcelona and eleven other major cities over the housing crisis

BrusselsTwelve major European cities sound the alarm in Brussels over the housing crisis. Some of the main metropolises of the European Union - such as Barcelona, ​​Paris, Athens or Amsterdam - have united in the Belgian capital on Thursday to ask the community institutions to push forward various measures to facilitate citizens' access to housing. "We need solutions and we need them now," Barcelona's mayor, Jaume Collboni, demanded at an event in the European Parliament.

The main initiative that these large cities are asking for is the relaxation of fiscal rules. That is, that investments in housing are not computed when calculating the deficit of the Member States, which must be a maximum of 3%. In this way, state, regional and municipal administrations would have free rein in financing housing, and would not be limited by the tax rules imposed by Brussels.

In fact, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has already announced that she will take a similar measure only to boost spending on defence in the European bloc, but this is a great exception and, for example, the EU did not relax fiscal rules during the economic crisis of 2008 and when the euro zone was in danger. The deficit ceilings were only frozen during the pandemic and, for the moment, it has been the first and last time.

Along the same lines, the manifesto signed by these twelve large cities urges Brussels to increase the budget it allocates to housing and, among other things, asks that municipalities have "direct access" to European funds in order to be able to allocate them to the construction of "social and affordable" flats. In turn, the Commissioner for Housing, the Danish Social Democrat Dan Jørgensen, has already taken up the gauntlet and this Thursday he announced in a European parliamentary commission that he intends to increase the investments of the community executive in this sector: he wants to go from the current 7.5 billion euros to 15,000.

Beyond funding, Collboni has also pushed for the European Commission to promote a regulatory framework at the community level to allow municipal administrations to intervene in rental prices or, among others, in the proliferation of tourist apartments or seasonal rentals. In this regard, the mayor of Barcelona has claimed some of the measures of his council, such as the caps on rental prices or the desire to put an end to tourist housing in 2028.

Emergency plan for housing

Collboni also announced that these European metropolises have agreed to "propose" an emergency plan for the entire European club "this spring" and will be ahead of "the official plan of the European Union" on access to housing that is expected to be deployed next year. "The difference is that the problems knock on the door of mayors," said Collboni, who assures that the big cities cannot "wait" and "are in a hurry."

However, the socialist mayor has not advanced what this emergency plan will be based on or what economic endowment it will have, nor whether it would be financed with European funds and exactly with which ones. It should also be remembered that an initiative of this type at a community level would probably have to have the approval of Brussels or even of the Member States and the European Parliament, which requires more time, and would end up stepping on the same strategy of access to housing that the European Commission is already working on and to which Collboni says no.

The joint statement was also presented by the Mayor of Athens, Haris Doukas; the Mayor of Bologna, Matteo Lepore; the Mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karácsony; the Mayor of Leipzig, Burkhard Jung; the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo; the Mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri; the Vice-President for Housing and Urban Policy of the Territoire metropolitane de Lyon, Renaud Payre; and the Councillor for Housing of Lisbon, Filipa Roseta, as well as representatives from Amsterdam, Ghent and Warsaw. Although the majority of leaders are from progressive parties, there are also liberal and conservative political families. "We are a network of cities from different geographical points of Europe and of all colours," said Collboni, who is the mayor who led the initiative.