{"id":141761,"date":"2025-10-24T01:51:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T01:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/141761\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T01:51:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T01:51:11","slug":"eu-finally-takes-ownership-of-housing-crisis-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/141761\/","title":{"rendered":"EU finally takes ownership of housing crisis \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shortly after taking over the Council \u2014 which hadn\u2019t organized a single meeting of the EU\u2019s housing ministers from 2013 to 2022 \u2014 Costa included the issue on the EU Leaders Agenda for 2025<\/a>. Thursday\u2019s summit consolidates his aspiration to have national leaders work together on the crisis he believes poses a triple threat to the EU, as it \u201caffects the fundamental rights of citizens, negatively impacts competitiveness, and is undermining trust in democratic institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

All talk?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The complexity of the crisis means reaching a consensus in the Council will be difficult. National leaders are likely to be divided on how \u2014 or whether \u2014 to reign in speculation<\/a> or regulate short-term rentals<\/a>, and not all may support prioritizing the flow of EU cash to cooperatives<\/a> and other affordable public housing<\/a> schemes.<\/p>\n

In this week\u2019s draft conclusions, national leaders described the crisis as \u201cpressing,\u201d but only proposed that the Commission present its already-scheduled Affordable Housing Plan<\/a>. Moreover, the latest version of the text, seen by POLITICO on Wednesday, stresses that Brussels\u2019 response should have \u201cdue regard\u201d for subsidiarity \u2014 the legal principle that holds the EU should only meddle in an area if it\u2019s certain to achieve better results than actors at the national, regional or local level.<\/p>\n

Sorcha Edwards of Housing Europe \u2014 which represents public, cooperative and social housing providers \u2014 said the text suggests the Council is preemptively excusing itself from intervening, and potentially setting itself up for a clash with the Commission if it considers J\u00f8rgensen\u2019s Affordable Housing Plan to be excessively interventionist.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not very surprised because each country will be defensive about their own approach,\u201d she said, adding \u201cshort-term rental platforms will welcome the news.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Edwards said a dedication to subsidiarity could be a good thing if it means the EU focuses on taking serious action on debt rules and funneling Brussels cash to social and public housing projects, while giving local authorities more tools to address the problem.<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s summit will be closely watched by local leaders, like Barcelona Mayor Jaume Collboni \u2014 one of 19 politicians from major EU cities who signed an open letter<\/a> urging the EU to do more, if only to rein in the far right.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis week\u2019s European Council summit is an extremely relevant milestone towards an ambitious EU response to the housing crisis \u2014 the main source of social inequality in Europe,\u201d Collboni told POLITICO. \u201cWe, the cities, expect a clear mandate for the European Commission to put forward an Affordable Housing Plan, which includes three key elements for cities: agile funding, regulation tools and decision-making capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shortly after taking over the Council \u2014 which hadn\u2019t organized a single meeting of the EU\u2019s housing ministers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[19616,83962,9,10,4912,10414,13,14,6,11,12,83963,83964,15,16,5,81065,7,8,4894,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-141761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-affordable-housing","9":"tag-antonio-costa","10":"tag-breaking-news","11":"tag-breakingnews","12":"tag-cities","13":"tag-far-right","14":"tag-featured-news","15":"tag-featurednews","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-living-cities","20":"tag-luis-montenegro","21":"tag-main-news","22":"tag-mainnews","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-pedro-sanchez","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-topstories","27":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","28":"tag-world","29":"tag-world-news","30":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115426642162252812","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}