On November 20th, the European Holiday Home Association (EHHA) submitted an official complaint to the European Commission about the new Catalan short-term rental accommodation rules which, according to the EHHA, are contrary to EU law. “By submitting the EU complaint, we hope that the European Commission will take a step further and open a formal infringement procedure against Spain,” said Viktorija Molnar, secretary general of the EHHA.
In June of this year, the city of Barcelona announced that short term rentals would be phased out of the city in a sweeping plan by officials to get a grip on the northern Spanish city’s housing crisis. Barcelona has just over 10,000 licensed tourist apartments, serving the highest number of international tourists in any Spanish city. That influx of spending and demand for accommodation from what some call overtourism by foreign tourists has led to rental prices rising by nearly 70% over the last decade. House buyers meanwhile faced an increase of 38%.
Before EEHA’s challenge, the city’s original plan was for those 10,000 licences to be scrapped over the next five years. The measure was designed “to guarantee the right to live in Barcelona and deal effectively with the housing crisis we have been suffering for years,” the city’s mayor, Jaume Collboni, wrote on X.
“We are confronting what we believe is Barcelona’s largest problem,” Collboni told delegates at a government event, adding that if plans go ahead with no hiccups, “from 2029, tourist flats as we conceive of them today will disappear from the city of Barcelona”.
With a “strong” inspection regime in place to root out any illegal vacation rentals, the current stock of short term holiday flats would be sold or go on the open long term rental market, Colboni said, creating what he described as “a turning point”.
The disappearance of the tourist flat cannot come soon enough for Barcelona’s would-be residents, long priced out of a housing market dominated by massive demand for short term holiday rentals. The heavy tourist footfall has other negative effects too, including noise pollution, overwhelmed public transport routes not originally intended for the masses, and the “feeling of collapse” generated by the huge numbers of visitors who arrive on cruise ships.
For its part, the EHHA believes that the Catalan Housing Decree (3/2023) breaches the EU’s Services Directive as restrictions laid down for short-term rental accommodation providers are unjustified for addressing the overtourism and housing shortages. “The European Commission services have already raised concerns to the Spanish Authorities that the restrictions laid down in the Catalan Housing Decree are not suitable to attain the objective of fighting housing shortage,” said Molnar. “They are disproportionate to that objective and that they seem to breach the EU’s Services Directive”.
In June, mayor Colboni warned that the impact of the move will not be felt overnight, in a debate that has been ongoing since a supposed moratorium on new tourist flat licenses in 2014. At that time, there were 9,600 licensed units. Since 2016, 9,700 illegal tourist apartments have been shut down and 3,500 apartments repurposed as primary housing for locals. The hotel sector would be set to benefit.
Amid claims the city’s economy would be hit, Barcelona’s Deputy Mayor, Laia Bonet, has implied that landlords should think themselves lucky they would have income for the five years before the licenses will be retired, with the long lead-in period helping to mitigate their losses.
