Irene Tinagli: "Avem nevoie de mai mulți bani pentru locuințe"

Irene Tinagli prezidează Comisia specială a Parlamentului European privind criza locuințelor în Uniunea Europeană. Europarlamentarul italian explică pentru ChatEurope de ce piața europeană a locuințelor se află sub o asemenea presiune și ce așteptări are de la planul Comisiei Europene privind locuințele accesibile, care va fi prezentat pe 16 decembrie.

Translate

spinner.loading

spinner.loading

 

What are the main reasons of the current housing crisis in Europe ?

There are multiple reasons, multiple causes of this crisis, depending on the country. But overall, what we have seen in recent years is first of all, an increase in the cost of production of construction that has pushed the prices up. And an increase in demand that is related not only to the traditional demand for residential housing, but (...) to the demand of housing for touristic use, for example. We have seen an increase of mobility, workers mobility, students mobility.

So, we have multiple demands for housing which are going above and beyond the traditional residential use but actually are reducing the supply available for residential use.

At the same time, the supply for affordable housing, social housing in most countries has been reduced over the years. Policies dedicated to housing, which were more popular in the past century, have been almost eliminated in most countries, which are limiting themselves to maintain the current stock of social housing. In most cases, this stock has been privatized or sold out, so it's been reduced. 

So, we see an explosion of different demands and a supply, especially for the segment of social and affordable housing, that has been reducing or at least not increasing. 

Do you believe that the European Union has been too slow so far in putting in place concrete policies to improve people's access to affordable housing ? 

We don't have the direct powers to intervene in policies that are directed to housing because these are mostly national (competences), and in many cases regional competences. So it took a while before we decided to move into this topic. But I think it's very important because there are many things that we can do at the European level and the committee that we created in the Parliament has been dedicated to better analyse, understand the roots of the problem and see what we could do at the European level.

The increase in demand for housing for touristic use, for example, was not associated in the past to housing in itself as a problem but now we realize that it is affecting the availability of houses in certain cities and for example on this field the European Union could intervene with a framework for a possible regulation that countries and cities that are experiencing the greatest problems could adopt. That does not mean that the European Union has to regulate from Brussels but to define the criteria and the conditions under which cities and regions could intervene if they see the need.

Another issue (regards) state aid rules for example. Supporting social housing projects means also to do some public investments that sometimes may bump into state aid rules, so making some little changes in state aid rules could allow for greater flexibility in developing social housing projects that are dedicated for example to the middle lower class. So far, most of social housing or the possibility to use public money for social housing was very restricted only to the very low and most fragile and vulnerable groups.

There are things that can be done and even the fact that we are analyzing the problem in depth, that we are looking at all the countries, we are looking for best cases, best practices, worst practices, what could make the problem worse, I think it can be a very, very valuable contribution.

Can you sum up the top priorities you want to see in the strategy that will be published mid-December by the European Commission ?

A review in state aid rules could be very helpful, a new legal framework for short-term rentals regulations and I honestly would like to see also something in the next multi-annual financial framework. I think we need more money dedicated to housing, we need to support countries and regions and cities that are struggling with financing and supporting new social housing projects.

We can devise new models for public-private cooperation but we also need more public investments and here the European Union could play a role but we would need some courage in the next multi-annual financial framework.

These are the things that I think are the biggest priorities and then of course, we are also working a lot in trying to simplify the permitting processes to make it faster and easier to also renovate and build new projects. This is also an important thing that could be done.