The EU Council adopted on Monday, 19 October, in Luxembourg, a recommendation on fighting housing exclusion, including homelessness. CaleaEuropeana reported Roxana Minzatu's announcement. The Council published the press release. This is not a regulation and not an automatic allocation of a home.

The text was presented on behalf of the Irish presidency by James Browne, at the EPSCO Council. It is the Council's first recommendation dedicated to these problems, not the EU's first binding legislative act on homelessness. Recommendations, under Article 288 TFEU, have no binding legal force.

Minzatu wrote that she congratulated the Irish presidency and that governments must now implement the provisions. That is a political message. Implementation depends on national, regional and local measures and resources. Adoption does not, by itself, open a funding scheme for beneficiaries.

The Council calls for a person-centred, housing-led approach: early identification of households at risk, debt counselling, emergency rental support, safeguards against eviction, one-stop access to services and more social and affordable housing. That is a list of prompts, not a construction timetable.

The Commission vice-president put the figure at 1.4 million Europeans without shelter or at risk of the street. The figure is hers, from Monday's message. She also announced the intention of a European instrument to activate people who are not working and are in poverty, and that the Quality Jobs Act is in the last stage of drafting. Intention and drafting are not acts adopted today.

Member states are recommended to report to the Commission every five years. Anyone writing that housing exclusion has been regulated as a law is writing past a recommendation.

Image: Cayambe, Kirchberg, Luxembourg, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons; the Council venue, not a home.

Sources consulted: Combaterea excluziunii locative, reglementată în prima Recomandare a Consiliului UE, anunță Roxana Mînzatu - CaleaEuropeană; A place to call home: Council adopts recommendation on addressing housing exclusion and homelessness - Consilium.