The Porta a Porta movement took the protest against housing prices to the European capital this Wednesday. In Brussels, they presented their arguments in the form of a demonstration in one of the city squares, where they shouted that the cost of housing in Portugal is unaffordable.
There were about two dozen. They gathered in front of the European Parliament, where they set up tents, in a symbolic action, against the increase in housing rentals.
“The situation is dire,” lamented André Escoval, spokesperson for the Porta a Porta movement, in statements to TSF. “All families are very suffocated by the price of housing and, therefore, either interest rates go down or this is what awaits us in Portugal and we must take measures now because the situation is very serious,” he lamented.
“What we have come here to say is that if the European Central Bank and the European institutions do not lower interest rates, the solutions that remain for the Portuguese are those that are back here, it is the store, it is the street,” he said. .
“The average value of housing payments, as a result of the increase in interest rates in the last year, increased by 60% in Portugal. Today, the average payment for a house in Portugal is 523 euros. Yes We are talking about rent, the average payment is 680 euros and the national minimum wage is 760 euros,” he lamented.
“We spent a whole month working to leave all the money from our work to the landlord and the banks, hence the enormous profits they are making. It can’t be, those profits have to be the ones that pay for the house,” said the representative of the movement. , repeating one of the slogans shouted in Brussels: “Housing is for living, not for speculating.”
In this protest, in the Belgian capital, the objective was to attract the attention of the European authorities, but mainly – despite the political crisis – of the Government of Portugal.
“It is urgent to take measures and the political situation cannot prevent them from being taken. They can be taken, they must be taken now. Stop the 7% increase in rents in 2024 that the Government claims does not exist and that will actually happen,” he criticized André Escoval, predicting that “it cannot be, [e] “Measures must be taken now to reverse the situation.”
Activists from the Porta a Porta movement traveled at the invitation of MEP João Pimenta Lopes, from the PCP. Pimenta Lopes considers it urgent that measures be taken and asks the Government to act.
“Concrete policies are needed to reverse the decision to keep euro rates high, 4.5% after 10 consecutive increases by the ECB, to reverse this path, but more is needed,” defended the MEP in statements to journalists, claiming that the Government has.
“At the national level, it would be possible for the Portuguese Government, either through the intervention of the institutions of the European Union or through concrete measures, for example, to place, as we have also proposed, these overwhelming benefits announced yesterday “3.3 billion of euros of bank profits, 12 million euros per day of profit, mobilize these resources to ensure that the burden that rising interest rates are placing on families can be alleviated,” he said.
The deputy considered that “in the rental market” “tenant protection measures” must also be created, to “guarantee security at the end of the right to housing and that there are no speculative increases, that is, market regulatory measures “.
Pimenta Lopes also maintains that the “mobilization of resources, so many that exist, whether from the PRR or other structural funds for investment in public housing, allows, in fact, to expand a very limited supply in Portugal, when compared to other countries, thus contributing to counteract the speculative effects in the real estate market, whether in acquisition or rental, and guarantee housing at affordable prices.”
Source: TSF
