Decided on 13 November 2014

Relevant Articles: Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms

FEANTSA has won its collective Collective Complaint against The Netherlands. First lodged with the Council of Europe in July 2012, the Collective Complaint (no. 86/2012) against the Netherlands alleged iolations of several rights under the Revised European Social Charter. Today, the European Committee for Social Rights lifted the embargo on the final decision in this case.

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By Mariann Dósa and Éva Tessza Udvarhelyi , A Város Mindenkié (The City is for All),
Budapest, Hungary
avarosmindenkie@gmail.com

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Imagine a world where it is illegal to sit down. Could you survive if there were no place you were allowed to fall asleep, to store your belongings, or to stand still? For most of us, these scenarios seem unrealistic to the point of being ludicrous. But, for homeless people across America, these circumstances are an ordinary part of daily life.

On 13 June 2014, Housing Rights Watch, along with Fondation Abbe Pierre and FEANTSA organized an expert workshop to talk about housing solutions for homeless people in Europe.

Greek law provided an exemption of taxes on the transfer of immovable property and on the purchase of a first home in Greece, granted solely (respectively) to persons permanently residing in Greece and Greek nationals. The ECJ recalled that “the rules regarding equal treatment forbid not only overt discrimination by reason of nationality but also all covert forms of discrimination which, by the application of other criteria of differentiation, lead in fact to the same result” (para 45) and held that the Greek provisions constituted an impediment to free movement.

In this case, the Court expressly held that “a national of a Member State who wishes to pursue an activity as a self-employed person in another Member State must, if complete equality of competition with the nationals of the latter state is to be assured, be able to obtain housing in conditions equivalent to those enjoyed by such national” (…); therefore, there is a violation of Articles 52 and 59 of the Treaty “where a Member State, under various provisions of its legislation, permits only its own nationals to purchase and lease housing built or renovated with the help of public funds and

In this case, the Court put an emphasis on the equality of migrant workers and their family’s housing rights with housing rights of national workers; as a result, a national legislation cannot refuse the renewal of a residence permit or the reduction a posteriori of the period of validity of a residence permit for a family member of a migrant worker, on the grounds of the unsuitability of the housing situation of the worker’s family.

In 2009, an Albanian long-term resident in Italy (hence deserving equal treatment with EU citizens in the field of social assistance, as expressed by Directive 2003/109/EC on the status of long-term resident third-country nationals in the EU) was refused housing assistance for the first time since his first application in 2004. The funds for housing assistance for non-EU nationals, inferior to the funds available for EU citizens, were exhausted.