The EU's new housing law is not just an Airbnb law (empty flats and second homes are in it too)
The European Commission tabled the Affordable Housing Act on 9 September. It bans nothing by itself — it gives councils a shared yardstick for proving housing pressure before they restrict anything.
The story reached Portugal last week wearing a single label: Brussels is going to regulate short-term rentals. True enough, and nowhere near the whole of it. What the European Commission tabled on 9 September is called the Affordable Housing Act and, on the Commission’s own page for it, it reaches the rules authorities already write about short-term rentals, second homes and vacant dwellings. All three, not just the one everybody argues about.
There is a second difference that matters more than it sounds. The Act bans nothing.
So what does it actually do?
It is two instruments rather than one. The first is a proposed EU Regulation that sets out a common way to establish that an area is under housing stress, and then requires any measure taken in response to be evidence-based, necessary, proportionate and aimed at the pressure identified, with transparency and periodic review attached. The second is a Commission Recommendation, non-binding, pointed at the other half of the problem: speeding up supply, making better use of land and existing buildings, simplifying planning and permitting, and building more affordable, social and student housing.
The Commission is blunt about why. Cities and member states are already restricting, but they are doing it by applying general legal principles, with no shared operational framework for demonstrating that the pressure is real and the response proportionate. What they asked Brussels for was legal certainty.
What it could mean in Portugal
Anyone hoping for a European brake on alojamento local will be disappointed, and anyone hoping for an amnesty will be too. The honest reading is that the yardstick cuts both ways.
A council that wants to cap short-term-rental registrations in a neighbourhood will have to show data rather than intent, and revisit the measure later. In exchange, a council that can demonstrate the pressure ends up on firmer ground and is harder to challenge in court. It is an evidentiary regime, and that is the real change for anyone renting, hosting or buying to let here. Read it alongside what is already known about next year’s rent update — they are pieces of the same puzzle.
Then comes the slow part. This is a proposal: it still has to go through the European Parliament and the Council, and what comes out the other end is rarely what went in. If you would rather read the articles than the summaries, the draft Regulation is published in full.
Image: Thomas Padilla / European Union, 2026 / EC - Audiovisual Service (CC BY 4.0)
