National governments and Brussels policymakers need to address the housing crisis facing Europe if they want to overcome growing support for populist politicians, the first European commissioner for housing has said.
Dan Jørgensen, the centre-left Danish politician overseeing housing and energy policy in the European Commission, said housing policy was an area the EU’s powerful executive body had traditionally kept out of, but that had to change.
“If we don’t as policymakers take this problem seriously and acknowledge that this is a social problem that needs action, then the populists will win,” Mr Jørgensen said. “Obviously the anti-EU populists don’t have the answers, so it will be tragic if they were to benefit from this situation, but that is a real danger.”
The fact that housing was seen as a market to speculate and profit from was a problem, he said. “You can buy gold or you can buy apartments, you probably make more money buying apartments. It’s not a bad thing that you can make money in the housing sector, but it’s a bad thing if that is the only purpose.”
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House prices were rising across Europe at the same time as the number of permits to build new homes were falling, he said. That meant there were too few affordable houses, whether people wanted to rent or buy.
The commission was looking at what more it could do in the regulation of short-term lets, such as Airbnb and similar platforms, which he said were a “huge problem in many cities”.
There are plans under way to relax EU state-aid rules that previously restricted governments from subsidising housing projects and developments.
“We will also look into the rights of tenants. Are we protecting tenants well enough? I suspect that we will conclude that we are not,” he said.
Mr Jørgensen said he was considering “all possibilities” to improve renters’ rights, which might include proposing new EU legislation in the area.
He said this was part of a push to get Brussels officials to look at housing policy with fresh eyes.
“The common understanding has been that this is really an area where the EU competence is extremely limited, and I would like to challenge that,” he said.
The commissioner is preparing a “comprehensive plan” for how the EU can help national governments boost the supply of affordable housing, which is likely to be published in December. “It is simply not enough to have meetings and committees. We also need action,” he said.
Housing policy is on the agenda of a summit of EU leaders in Brussels next week for the first time, signalling a desire for greater European co-operation to tackle the problem.
The European Council summits set big-picture policy for the union, so national leaders’ discussions will feed into Mr Jørgensen’s future proposals. “I would be surprised if they do not conclude that real action is needed urgently,” he said.
The Danish politician is examining whether certain reforms that worked in individual countries could be introduced on a European level, even ones that “could be deemed a little bit controversial”.
On a recent trip to Copenhagen Mr Jørgensen said he visited with a local homelessness organisation a park where he met people from eastern Europe and southern Europe sleeping rough.
Given the right of people to move freely within the EU, homelessness could not be viewed as a “national problem” any more, he said.
