Structural Funds allocated to housing
A Housing Europe analysis of the latest update released by the European Commission
Brussels, 3 November 2016 | Published in Economy, Future of the EU & Housing
In the new database published we can see that in total 7 billion € have been allocated to housing, 5.5 of which will go for energy efficiency measures and the smaller part for other priorities.
The European Commission recently published the figures for ESIF allocation. According to the data which is available at DG REGIO website, we collected the relevant information on housing. Please find the table at the 'Downloads' section below.
Our previous report 'Structural Funds and Housing 2014-2020' showed that 77% of Operational Programmes allow investment in housing. Back in 2015, only some countries published how much money they intend to spend on housing under the two main priorities: energy efficiency and social inclusion. And other countries only mentioned whether they prioritise housing or not without clarifying the foreseen amount.
Housing infrastructure appears under expenditure code 054 with 1.5 billion € in total. The ‘housing infrastructure’ expenditure means investment in housing related measures, very often in social housing but depends on the country. 14 Member States foresee this type of expenditure until 2020 (BG, DE, CZ, SP, FR, GR, HR, HU, IT, LT, MT, PL, PT, SK). The biggest amount is foreseen by Italy, Poland and Hungary. Portugal, Poland and Italy put housing infrastructure in all of their Operational Programmes.
Other countries such as Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Romania and the UK have foreseen significant allocation for Energy efficiency renovation of existing housing stock; and energy efficiency renovation of the public infrastructure which could also affect our sector.
Some Member States also put explicit allocation under 'Integration of marginalized communities and Active inclusion'. At the same time, 'Active and healthy Ageing' is also eligible in countries such as Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Luxembourg and Italy.
Finally, under the Terriotorial cooperation programme (Interreg) France, Germany and Switzerland (Rhin supérieur/Oberrhein) have foreseen 500,000 € total allocation in housing infrastructure. This is a quite unique initiative that we will keep monitoring with great interest.
It should be noted that all the expenditure expressed in Euros only represents the foreseen amount, since Member States have quite large freedom in implementation. Therefore, during the programming period this envisaged allocation can actually change depending on how much the countries deviate from the foreseen operations.
The invested money should be published every year on the website of the regional authority on the national language. As the projects just started being implemented, the expenditure for 2014 and 2015 should not be significant yet. Our challenge remains to mobilise at local level and make sure that the money is actually invested in the sector.