“The Mais Habitação package will result in less housing, less tourism, less jobs, less economy. It will not meet housing targets and has the potential to destroy the country’s main growth driver. It will be a disaster.” The one who guarantees it is Eduardo Miranda, who heads the Association for Local Accommodation in Portugal (ALEP). the economy.
All this is also emphasized in the petition that a group of businessmen and supporters of the AL handed over to the Assembly of the Republic yesterday, which has collected almost 10,000 signatures in 72 hours. On the day when the More Housing program was voted on in general and debated in the specialty, they wanted to “show their concern and dissatisfaction” in the face of a “proposal for legislative and fiscal change that threatens” the sector and will have “ruthless consequences” for tourism.
But this is just one of the ways the AL is acting to slow down the new rules. “Given the seriousness of the issue, we are in all councils,” Eduardo Miranda assumes, explaining that he has tried to sensitize all parties. We are also keeping the door open for dialogue with the government, from whom we expect “common sense”. , despite the inflexibility shown so far. Brussels has also been warned about what it considers “an affront to free initiative”, and if all else fails there will be legal arguments, subjecting the package to a “fine-toothed legal analysis”, he confirms in an interview with DV .
“AL represents 42% of Portugal’s 100 million overnight stays,” he says (see box), noting that spending on accommodation is only a quarter of tourist spending to conclude that its destructive potential is three times greater than what directly affects the LA, extending to restaurants, commerce, culture, etc. “The 22 million foreign tourists we received spent 8.5 billion here last year, it’s 3.5% of GDP that we question” , he says.
“To accommodate all those tourists, 2,000 hotels would have to be opened – that would indeed have a disastrous effect on accommodation, in addition we would standardize the entire offer.” Eduardo Miranda also recalls the flexibility guaranteed by the AL at specific times, such as concerts or events such as World Youth Day or the Web Summit: “Nobody here has done the math.”
The European regulations are based on the Portuguese AL
In an interview with DV, ALEP’s president highlights more inconsistencies in a housing package that implodes Portugal’s rules for the AL, the same rules Brussels deemed “so balanced that they served as a model” to design the European regulations that are in preparation and would end should enter into force this year.
Eduardo Miranda, who was appointed last year as president of the international association of the sector, the European Holiday Home Association, has helped in this work. “And now Portugal is taking this turn, by making disproportionate regulations, flouting local power and without relying on studies or data showing the intended impact on housing,” he laments, adding that the measures even contradict with the new legislation currently under construction. European Commission.
As the DV wrote, Mais Habitação’s interference in the AL rules should have been previously communicated to Brussels by the government, which has not happened, and the Commission remained “awaiting clarification”. Even to be able to answer questions from CDS and PSD MEPs about the suitability of the package for European rules. Amid disproportionality, legal inconsistencies and tax abuses, Eduardo Miranda believes there is a good chance that these measures will lead to the same goal as the Irish package, rejected by Brussels for failing to respect competition laws and the Services Directive.
Measures to kill sector
To the DV, the president of ALEP lists the measures in question, which he said were designed to “kill AL in the short and medium term, suffocate tourism and condemn it to stagnation and decline”. In addition to the aggravated IMI, which is guaranteed to leave many owners in the red – especially small ones, the majority, with homes in AL – a large portion will be forced to throw in the towel. And that does not translate into more rental properties, he believes. “An important part of the supply is killed with the possibility that condominiums can close an AL working in an apartment of a residential building at any time and for no reason”. Then there is the special contribution (CEAL), which is even being looked at by ALEP lawyers. The “Medina tax creates a double taxation that suffocates those who remain,” he says, and has “immoral and unconstitutional” outlines, as it does not tax profits at 20%, but an estimated yield, “without regard to whether It’s a question of a house that runs all year round or not, extends to all apartments on the coast and can even be taxed, causing damage to the owner”.
Miranda also points to the effects of the non-transferability that the government wants to impose on the AL: “If the manager cannot switch because the permit has been revoked, and issuing new permits is prohibited, homes that leave the AL will not return. And this will have no effect on the housing market, because in many cases (70% of AL outside the two largest cities) we are talking about holiday homes or T1 of around 30m2, in Lisbon and Porto (50%), they are not suitable for families. As a result, the housing potential is nil and the destruction of economic value is gigantic.” And he concludes: “This is a political issue.”
Threatened competitiveness
All this, the ALEP leader believes, will also have an impact on the innovation, competitiveness and diversity that AL has brought to the industry. “Who is going to invest in qualification, in sustainability, in permanent and stable jobs, knowing that their AL could close at any moment? How can we want to be a leader in sustainability and competitiveness in tourism if no one is going to invest? With these measures , we will be less competitive and innovative in tourism every year.”
The official therefore believes that Meer Wonen not only hinders evolution, but condemns the tourism sector to decline: “Whoever remains will not be able to modernize and will not want to invest, knowing that the permits will expire in 2030 and no one knows what will come next – it will be the Housing Charter, which has yet to be drawn up, that will set the rules.”
Source: DN
