The President of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), Séamus Boland, called on European authorities on Tuesday at the Forum Europa in Brussels to “declare the housing crisis an emergency and act accordingly”, with the necessary administrative measures and financial backing to start seeing results.
“I would like to see Member States, both at European level and within the Council of Europe, decide that we are facing an emergency. I myself would consider it an emergency”, Boland emphasised at a breakfast briefing organised by New Economy Forum in the EU capital.
During his speech, the EESC President explained that the housing crisis in Europe has two causes. On the one hand, the lack of funding packages, which depend on both the banking sector and the public sector.
On the other, building regulations in many parts of Europe that “are stifling” construction and are causing building permits to take longer to obtain and projects to be delayed. Added to this is a problem of labour supply and demand within the sector.
Boland noted that the appointment of a European Commissioner for Energy and Housing, Dan Jørgensen, is “a good start”, but admitted that he would like him to adopt “a more radical approach” to tackling the problem.
The EESC President reported that he had also raised this issue with the President of the European Council, Antonio Costa, who showed empathy for the situation, although, in Boland’s view, more than just empathy is needed.
“It is an emergency. Let’s call it what it is. We are not building enough homes across most of Europe. We are not building them quickly enough, and we are allowing a younger generation to be deprived of the chance to have, at the very least, a permanent home of their own, whether owned or under a long-term tenancy”, he lamented.
Boland warned that the housing problem is not confined to young people, but also affects older people, some of whom are “victims of the financial crisis who never managed to own a home”, and who are now entering “a period of severe poverty”, with pensions that are not designed to cover their housing costs.
The EESC president predicted “a huge problem that is brewing” and warned that, by the middle of the next decade, “it will reach incredible proportions”. Hence the need for Brussels to “declare the housing situation an emergency”.
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