Brussels, Oct. 22, 2025 (Lusa) - Lisbon, Barcelona and Madrid are the cities in the European Union (EU) where residents spend the highest percentage of their wages on housing, according to a report released on Wednesday by the European Council.
The report released today by the team led by former Portuguese prime minister António Costa gathered information from Deutsche Bank and revealed that citizens in Lisbon spend 116% of their wages on housing.
The situation highlighted by Deutsche Bank takes into account costs for flats in the centre of major European cities and average wages.
In Barcelona and Madrid, the ratio for housing is 74%.
The three cities surpass cities with higher standards of living, such as Vienna (37%), Luxembourg and Frankfurt (34%) or Helsinki (35%).
The European Council report, entitled "One roof, many realities: the complex housing crisis in Europe", points out that this scourge is a "structural problem" in the European Union, as the president of the European institution, António Costa, said today after a meeting to discuss this issue and prepare for Thursday's leaders' meeting.
Although the housing crisis has "local characteristics and variations between regions", it is a problem that cuts across the EU, with the average cost increasing by 58.33% between 2015 and the first quarter of 2025.
Hungary is the country leading this growth (237%), followed by Portugal and Lithuania (147%), according to information provided by the EU Statistics Office (Eurostat).
Today, António Costa warned that it is necessary to solve the housing problem across the EU, otherwise "confidence in democratic institutions" will decline and competitiveness will suffer the consequences of this scourge.
Despite the "challenging geopolitical landscape", António Costa considered that it is "also essential to think about the daily concerns of EU citizens".
At a joint press conference with the presidents of the European Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Council in Brussels (Belgium), António Costa added that leaving this problem unresolved will lead to "negative consequences", affecting competitiveness and confidence in institutions.
For this reason, the problem of access to housing, due to the rise in rental and purchase prices beyond the means of families, will be discussed for the first time at a European Council meeting on Thursday.
And for "different causes", the President of the European Council promised "different solutions".
Although housing is a competence of each country in the European Community bloc, António Costa considered that it is possible to solve the problem with an EU-level approach, pointing to the plan that the European Commission is developing.
"Although it is a matter of national jurisdiction, it is crucial that, as European leaders, we are able to discuss how we can complement efforts," he said.
Asked what specific role the European Union, as a bloc, can play, António Costa said that the "first contribution will be to give national authorities more room for manoeuvre" to solve this problem by looking at the specific realities, using European funds, for example.
If there are countries that want to invest in "short-term rentals, we need to give them the tools to facilitate this," he argued.
AFE/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
