- 🇮🇳 Text · The Affordable Housing Act, a European bill on affordable housing
- 📅 Timeline · Presentation announced for 9 September 2026 by Commission Vice-President Teresa Ribera
- 🏚 Impact · A European legal basis allowing cities to restrict tourist furnished rentals and the purchase of properties not used as primary residences
- 🏠 Exemption · Occasional rentals of one’s own primary residence would remain protected · the target is the multi-property professional operator
- 📈 Context · Property prices rose by 64.9% and rents by 21.8% in the EU between 2015 and 2025
For the past decade, Paris, Barcelona and Venice have each been fighting independently against the conversion of their residential stock into transient accommodation, regularly losing in the courts. The European Commission is preparing to provide them with the legal weapon they have been missing. The text, expected on 9 September 2026, would give local authorities undeniable European grounds to limit, or even block, tourist furnished rentals in areas where housing has become unaffordable.
| Title | Affordable Housing Act, affordable housing component |
|---|---|
| Presentation | 9 September 2026, by Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission |
| Power granted to cities | Restrict short-term rentals and the acquisition of housing or land not intended as primary residences |
| Main target | Professional operators running multiple properties for seasonal rental |
| Maintained protection | Occasional rental of one’s own primary residence |
| Activation condition | Areas presenting tangible evidence of housing strain, according to criteria defined by the text |
| Background | Purchase prices +64.9% and rents +21.8% in the EU between 2015 and 2025 |
The real barrier lifted is not political, it is legal
Municipalities did not lack willpower; they lacked legal certainty. Every local regulation was exposed to challenges from platforms, often based on internal market freedoms, and a city that loses its court case also loses three years of housing policy. This litigation risk deterred many medium-sized local authorities from taking action, even where the pressure was obvious.
A harmonised baseline changes everything: restriction is no longer a local initiative that must be defended, but the application of a European framework. The burden of proof shifts, and cities move from a defensive posture to an assertive regulatory power, including over the purchase of properties intended solely for rental operation.
The focus is on the professional operator, not the resident
The distinction is at the heart of the text and deserves to be understood. Private individuals who rent out their homes for a few weeks a year are not targeted: the initial spirit of home-sharing is explicitly preserved. What Brussels is targeting is the commercial exploitation of entire portfolios of apartments, which have become de facto hotels without carrying the corresponding obligations.
To prevent arbitrariness, the activation of restrictions would be conditional on documented evidence of market pressure. The gap between property prices and resident household income serves as the benchmark indicator, which mechanically limits the measure to genuinely suffocated markets rather than the entire territory.
Fifteen years of divergence between prices and wages
European data frames the urgency. Between 2015 and 2025, purchase prices rose by 64.9% across the Union, and private sector rents by 21.8%, well beyond income growth in most capitals. The text extends the European affordable housing plan initiated at the end of 2025.
The structural cause remains the construction deficit, and no one in Brussels pretends otherwise. However, the withdrawal of tens of thousands of homes from the long-term rental market in hyper-centres has undeniably aggravated the shortage, and this is the lever on which a law can act quickly. We measured the scale of the phenomenon: platforms recorded 144 million nights in Europe in a single quarter.
The platforms’ counter-attack: build more rather than ban
The seasonal rental sector defends a consistent line: the housing crisis is solved by increasing supply, not by tightening rental rules. The argument is not absurd, since the under-production of new housing is indeed the root cause, but it evades the question of the allocation of existing stock, which is the only variable over which a mayor has immediate leverage.
At this stage, the European executive does not seem to be altering its timetable. The stated objective is to provide cities with a directly operational tool as soon as the text is adopted, without waiting for the effects of a construction revival that will take decades to materialise.
Our perspective
For the hotel industry, and particularly for high-end hospitality, this text corrects a longstanding asymmetry. A hotel complies with safety standards, employment obligations, taxation and controls that an apartment rented by the night largely ignores, while sometimes catering to the exact same clientele. Restoring comparable competitive conditions is better, in the long run, than the price race triggered by this distortion.
There is a second effect, less commented upon and more interesting. Destinations that empty their centres of residents eventually lose what attracted travellers in the first place: neighbourhood shops, local life, a reason to visit. A city’s desirability is an asset consumed by over-tourism. Returning the management of land-use policy to local municipalities also indirectly protects the value of the product that the hotel industry sells.
