The European Parliament’s Housing Report: A Market Answer to a Social Crisis

As rents soar across Europe, the European Parliament reinforces market logic instead of confronting the structural roots of the housing crisis

Despite lacking direct legislative competence in housing, European policy has for decades exerted a profound, often detrimental, influence on national housing markets. As the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung study “The Impact of EU Policies on Housing” shows, EU economic governance, state aid rules, and internal market regulations have played a decisive role in shaping housing systems across the continent. Through the rules of economic governance, state aid regulations, and internal market directives, the EU has promoted a neoliberal paradigm that has encouraged the commodification of urban space.

In the last years, the housing crisis has moved well beyond a question of marginal poverty. Across Europe, rising rents and property prices are affecting increasingly broad segments of society, from young people to large parts of the urban middle classes. What was once treated primarily as a social policy issue has now become a central political challenge, raising questions about social stability and the future of Europe’s housing systems. These concerns reflect less humanitarian concern than growing awareness among political and economic elites of the destabilising socioeconomic and political effects of the housing crisis.

In response to this growing pressure, the European Commission has strongly relaunched the Affordable Housing Plan, initially introduced within the context of the EU Green Deal and reaffirmed in 2025 as a pillar of European cohesion. In parallel, the European Parliament established a special committee on the housing crisis (HOUS) with the objective of influencing the Executive’s future action plan. However, the final vote on this report, held on 10 March 2026, revealed a stark reality: the institutional response is not oriented toward social protection but toward reinforcing market logic.

The HOUS Report: A Victory for Real Estate Lobbies

The adopted report, drafted by rapporteur Borja Giménez Larraz (EPP), interprets the crisis almost exclusively through the lens of insufficient supply. The diagnosis is clear: if housing is lacking, the fault lies with regulatory and administrative constraints that discourage private investment. Consequently, a broad deregulatory approach aimed at accelerating construction and mobilizing private capital through public–private partnerships.

The text explicitly rejects corrective interventions such as rent controls, describing them as “ineffective” measures that would create uncertainty for investors. Rather than limiting speculation, the report promotes the use of public funds (Cohesion Policy and the EIB) to de-risk investments by large financial actors. Even more controversial is the introduction of a securitarian logic: Paragraph 28 of the report calls for coordinated policies to combat housing occupations, even suggesting the involvement of Europol to monitor movements of people who, lacking alternatives, seek shelter in vacant buildings. This amounts to a genuine criminalization of poverty, replacing the goal of “Zero Homelessness by 2030” with the police protection of private property.

The Vote in Plenary: A Grand Coalition for the Housing Market

An analysis of the parliamentary vote reveals a political dynamic that deeply unsettles the progressive camp. Although the report was adopted with 367 votes in favour, what stands out is the coalition that made this outcome possible. The text was supported by the European People’s Party (EPP), the Liberals (Renew), the Conservatives (ECR), and the far-right Patriots for Europe (PfE), joined by the majority of the Socialists and Democrats (S&D).

This alignment effectively sidelined attempts by the Left and partially the Greens to shift the report towards stronger social protections. The Left group had tabled a series of amendments aimed at addressing the structural roots of the housing crisis, including proposals to recognize housing as a fundamental right, regulate short-term rental platforms, and introduce measures to curb financial speculation in housing markets. None of these proposals was adopted.

Despite initially criticizing the draft as lacking substance, the majority of the Social Democratic group ultimately voted with the centre-right majority to approve the final text. Only a few national delegations chose to abstain. In this context, critics argue that the S&D group effectively acted as a “crutch for the right”, endorsing a report that largely reflects the priorities of construction and real estate interests rather than addressing the structural causes of Europe’s housing crisis.

The Emerging Consensus on Market Housing

This voting dynamic exposes a deeper contradiction in the EU’s emerging approach to the housing crisis. While it is widely acknowledged that rising housing costs threaten social cohesion across the continent, the policy direction endorsed by the parliamentary majority largely reproduces the structural dynamics that have contributed to the crisis.

The vote revealed the emergence of a broad parliamentary consensus on housing policy that stretches from the far right to much of the social-democratic camp. Despite important differences in rhetoric, parties ranging from the European People’s Party and the liberal centre to conservatives, the far right, and the majority of the Socialists & Democrats ultimately converged around a similar diagnosis: that the housing crisis should primarily be addressed by increasing supply and mobilizing private investment.

Rather than confronting the growing financialization of housing markets or strengthening public and non-profit housing systems, the report emphasizes investment-led solutions, including the mobilization of European financial instruments and public–private partnerships. In this framework, housing increasingly appears not as a social good to be guaranteed through public policy, but as an asset class whose development depends on attracting and securing private capital. The risk is that EU policy will focus on facilitating investment while leaving the structural drivers of housing inequality largely untouched.

The vote of 10 March clarifies the political direction currently shaping EU housing policy. Rather than confronting the structural drivers of the crisis, the parliamentary majority has opted for an approach centred on supply expansion and private investment. As the Commission prepares its European Affordable Housing Plan, this orientation will likely influence how EU funds and financial instruments are deployed in the coming years.

The Struggle for Housing Beyond the European Parliament

Although the HOUS report is not legally binding, it establishes the political track on which the Commission will build its future action plan. If the signal sent is one of deregulation and criminalization, the Left and social movements must prepare for a long period of political conflict.

The struggle is therefore likely to shift increasingly beyond the institutions. The Housing Action Days 2026 (23–29 March) represent the first large-scale mobilization responding to the outcome of the parliamentary vote. Mobilizations in more than 60 European cities will demand what the Parliament refused to consider: rent caps, the expropriation of large corporate landlords, and a massive programme of public housing construction. As grassroots movements emphasize, we are facing a “global majority” of tenants and workers who no longer accept being sacrificed on the altar of financial returns.

The housing question has now clearly entered the European political agenda, but the vote on the HOUS report shows that the institutional space opened around this issue has largely been occupied by the priorities of capital and the securitarian discourse of the far right. As a result, the demands emerging from Europe’s housing crisis find little representation within the European Parliament. If these voices are to be heard, they will increasingly have to emerge outside the institutions, through the mobilization of social movements capable of bringing into the streets the growing majority of people across Europe who struggle to secure a place to live.

In this context, democratic socialist forces at the European level now have a clear political legitimacy to carry these demands forward. This task opens new possibilities across different arenas, from local elections to European-level debates, but it will require strategic clarity and organizational capacity. As the parliamentary vote has shown, a broad political bloc has already closed ranks around the defence of profit and market interests rather than the needs of those struggling to secure a home.

Author: Federico Tomasone is a project manager at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Brussels Office, where he works on housing, trade unions, global social rights, and agriculture, as well as the office’s projects in Italy.

Photo credits: IMAGO / IPON