European Movements Unite against Austerity

Athens—Greece, the modern European state most notoriously affected by austerity measures, hosted an International Meeting on the Right to Housing on 20–21 June 2015. The participants reviewed the common issues among European housing rights movements, especially in the Mediterranean Coast region, and shared strategies to restore housing rights to those whom European austerity policies have afflicted, especially by forced evictions. The two-day meeting provided the substantive input into the following deliberations of the European Coalition on the Right to Housing and Land that the meeting’s participants programmed during 22–23 June 2015. Both events were part of the Week of Action in Solidarity with Greece and against Austerity, from 20 to 26 June.

Testimonies from Cyprus, England, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, England, Portugal, Romania, Croatia, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland and France affirmed the common struggles among European nations and peoples to realize adequate housing in the context of the current financial processes of dispossession that also constitute gross violations of their human rights.

Habitat International Coalition was present to offer support in linking the European issues with global processes and practices. That ranged from availing the Violation Database for European monitoring to delivering direct training and materials for using the human rights arguments and machinery in the struggle.

The HIC Secretary General explained how solidarity with movements can benefit from relating to the movements promoting the right to the city, the social function of property, and anchoring the human right to housing in the Habitat III process.

The Outcome

The International Meeting on the Right to Housing produced an inventory of issues to be addressed by civil society and social movements in the coming year(s). It reserved the detail of the “human right to housing” and treaty law approaches for future actions, but produced an inventory of transferrable policy strategies and demands common to all participants.

These included a set of demands of European governments and international parties. These were followed by a repertoire of social movement and strategies/approaches to pursue those demands through advocacy and social action.

This European Coalition on the Right to Housing and Land has now formed on the common ground that austerity has created. It promises now to coordinate actions Europe wide toward implementing the anti-austerity agenda.

See report in HIC News

See the related submissions of HLRN and its partner ASIA-USB to the review of Italy and Spain in the UPR process (2014) and the CESCR treaty review of Italy (2015).

Photo: HIC General-Secretary Álvaro Puertas Robina addresses the Athens gathering. Also pictured: Rita Silva, HABITA Lisbon (L) and Ringo Gotsleben, Alliance to Stop Evictions (Berlin).