Brussels, March 12 /Agerpres/ - Housing, or rather the lack of it, is a big problem across the European Union. What are bloc's governments doing about it? And how is the European Commission involved?

'Almost 900,000 people are currently homeless in Europe. Every night in Europe, a population comparable to that of Marseille or Turin, is without a home,' European Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jorgensen said at the first meeting of the Special Committee on the Housing Crisis in the European Parliament.

Nearly 10 percent of the European Union population spent 40 percent or more of their disposable income on housing and related costs, according to Jorgensen.

According to the Commissioner, over the past 15 years or so, rents in the EU have increased by around a quarter in real terms, and house prices have increased by around half.

The Danish Commissioner was laying out his plans to help the EU tackle one of the biggest problems facing the bloc's member states - the housing crisis which has risen rapidly up the political agenda, almost as fast as rents and house prices are going through the roof.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen appointed the former Danish energy minister to be the first commissioner for housing - an area where the EU has little direct power - to secure the support of the Socialists in the European Parliament for her re-election.

Acknowledging this fact, Jorgensen stressed to the parliament that 'most of the responsibility' for housing lies with EU countries and regional and local authorities, but made his case that there is 'room for Europe at the table and there [are] a lot of things that we can and should do'.

Jorgensen said that the Commission will publish its first-ever European Affordable Housing Plan. The plan will offer technical assistance to cities and EU member states and focus on investment and skills needed.

In particular, the Commission will develop a European Strategy for Housing Construction to:

support housing supply,
establish a pan-European investment platform for affordable and sustainable housing,
conduct an analysis of the impact of housing speculation,
support EU Member States to double the planned cohesion policy investments in affordable housing,
tackle systemic issues with short-term accommodation rentals,
make proposals to tackle the inefficient use of vacant housing stock,
and revise state-aid rules to enable housing support measures, notably for energy efficiency and social housing.

Housing cannot wait
In his speech, the Commissioner touched on the EU's direct lack of competence in housing policy. However, local governments in European cities are pushing for more action at an EU level.

The mayors of twelve EU cities, from Rome, Bologna, Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Budapest, Paris, Warsaw, Lisbon, Lyon, Ghent and Leipzig, have teamed up to call for an emergency plan by 2027 at the latest to tackle the housing crisis. The mayors want finances for housing to be exempt from EU fiscal rules limiting government expenditure. They also want unspent money from Covd-19 relief funding to be redistributed.

In addition, the mayors met with Jorgensen in Brussels to press him for assistance, underlining that the problem cannot wait for the next EU budget to be finalised before action can be taken.

The twelve mayors will also work in the coming months on a housing action plan for the Commission. Matteo Lepore, mayor of Bologna, highlighted especially that in Italy, between 10 and 15 percent of private houses are unoccupied.

Make yourself at home... if you can
In the Commissioner's homeland, Denmark, both rents and house prices are rising.

The price of owner-occupied housing rose in 2024 and is expected to rise further in 2025.

One of the major Danish banks, Nykredit, expects average house prices across Denmark to rise by 4.4 percent this year. For the Copenhagen apartment market, prices are forecast to rise by 6.2 percent this year.

One way Denmark wants to fix the housing stock, especially the lack of housing with affordable rent, is to convert temporary student housing into affordable and permanent public housing.

In Ireland, house prices rose last year at nearly twice the rate of 2023, as the number of homes available in the Republic dropped to a historic low in January 2025. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) revealed that house prices in December were 8.7 percent higher compared to the previous year in its latest residential property price index. This indicates that the annual rate of house price inflation nearly doubled in 2024, compared to the 4.4 percent increase seen in 2023.

Ireland's rental market is severely undersupplied and grossly overpriced, as the latest data from property website daft.ie shows. Average monthly rents in Dublin range from 2,294 to 2,704 Euro in the third quarter of 2024, depending on location. The national average stood at 1,955 Euro.

Austria, well-regarded in EU policy organisations for the supply and quality of social housing in Vienna, is not immune to the issue. The new Austrian government plans a gradual capping of rents for the regulated market over the next three years. From 2028, rent increases in the 'entire residential sector' will be limited to a maximum of 3 percent, according to the government programme.

A researcher from the Austrian Institute of Economic Research, Michael Klien, said the market impact of the government policies to intervene in support of affordable housing would be manageable.

However, 'you have to be a bit careful,' warned the expert. 'Some of the rent adjustments don't happen within a housing contract, but as many contracts are also limited in time, the increases are often applied to the new contract,' explained Klien. 'This is not covered by the regulation.'

Klien does not foresee any immediate price increases in private sector housing over the next three years to compensate for the impending cap. 'The rents currently being demanded on the market are already stretching the willingness to pay,' the economist said.

Spain is also taking drastic action to address rising house prices and rents. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez proposed in January to ban people outside the EU from buying housing in the country, as part of his drive to ease an affordable-homes crisis.

The plan followed a previous proposal from the Socialist leader to slap a tax of up to 100 percent on such property deals in a country struggling with strong demand and soaring prices. According to real estate registry data, British people led the way for foreign property buyers in 2023 with 9.5 percent of the total transactions by non-Spaniards.

Rents in Madrid have risen by 82 percent in the past decade, according to the property listings website Idealista, mirroring increases in other major Spanish cities. And social housing is very scarce. Madrid, a city of around 3.4 million people, has just 9,200 low-rent social housing units, one of the lowest figures in the EU.

The Spanish capital has resorted to a lottery to assign social housing flats. Every quarter, Madrid puts 50 to 200 social housing flats up for grabs that are open to people who meet income and residency criteria. But this lottery meets just 1 percent of demand.

Airbnb: live like a local, except there's no locals
Only 90,000 new units are built in Spain every year while 120,000 new households are created, according to Idealista figures, leading to a housing shortage that has caused rents to soar.

A boom in holiday lets on platforms such as Airbnb has also worsened the housing shortage in Spain, sparking large protests across the country and pushing housing to the top of the political agenda.

In Slovenia, rentals for tourism are also a factor in the housing crisis, which has become one of the key problems in recent years, especially among young people. The situation is particularly critical in Ljubljana and major urban centres.

In Croatia, the inability to buy a first home at an affordable price is one of the main reasons for large numbers of young people emigrating. One of the main problems is that many apartments on the Croatian Adriatic coast, and in the capital Zagreb, are intended for short-term tourist rentals. It has become impossible to find an apartment for long-term rental or for purchase at an affordable price.

Nearby, Bulgaria recorded one of the highest house price increases in the EU between 2010 and 2024. According to Eurostat, prices in the country have more than doubled (+110 percent) in this period.

The content of this article is based on reporting by AFP, ANSA, APA, BTA, HINA, Ritzau, STA, as part of the European Newsroom (enr) project. AGERPRES (editing by: Mariana Ionescu)