The Housing Crisis Cannot Be Solved Through Centralization

“The left-liberal majority in Brussels views housing merely as a social project and once again seeks to centralize a competence that belongs to the Member States,” emphasized György Hölvényi, Member of the European Parliament from the KDNP party during the European Parliament’s plenary debate on the housing situation.

The MEP warned that it is a worrying trend that in several European countries social housing has increasingly become a tool for managing mass migration.
“More than one million Europeans are waiting for housing, yet illegal migrants are often moved to the front of the line,” the representative pointed out.

In his speech, Hölvényi stressed that the worsening housing crisis has also been aggravated by the European Union’s energy policy decisions. “Meanwhile, Brussels has politically decided to give up cheap energy. Today, European families are paying the price of war-driven inflation and flawed energy policies.”

Hölvényi also highlighted that Europe continues to face a severe investment gap in affordable housing. While the EU plans to allocate €90 billion to Ukraine this year alone, the investment shortfall in affordable housing amounts to three times that figure annually, approximately €270 billion.

The representative emphasized: “Hungary has chosen a different path. Although it is not a wealthy country, it allocates 5 percent of its GDP to family and housing support.” He added that over the past decade and a half, Hungary has protected around half a million families from the consequences of the foreign-currency mortgage crisis, helped hundreds of thousands of families to obtain their own homes through family support programmes, and also supports young people and the purchase of first home with a preferential, fixed 3 percent loan.

Hölvényi concluded by stating: “We are doing everything possible to ensure that population decline does not have to be compensated by migration, and we will not give up protecting households from high energy prices. We are responsible for our own families and therefore we support them. This is how Hungary does its homework.”