Annual European responsible housing finance summit (Milan, 18 November 2024)

It is a pleasure to be joining you here in Milan for the European Responsible Housing Finance Summit.

The summit comes at a time when the need to tackle socio-economic inequalities is more pressing than ever.

Europe is grappling with multiple challenges: a war on our continent, climate change, strong migration flows, and a fragile economic outlook.

Against this difficult background, overcoming today’s mounting housing crisis will require our collective experience and resolve.

Housing is a human right that is enshrined in the European Social Charter of the Council of Europe. As the financial arm of the Council of Europe, the Council of Europe Development Bank strives to make those values concrete through its social projects. Therefore, access to adequate housing is an integral part of the CEB’s mission to forge an inclusive, sustainable and resilient Europe;

Our Bank’s focus is on vulnerable groups, including low-income earners, single-parent families, the elderly, persons with disabilities, migrants and refugees, and the homeless.

Our financing is in the form of loans and grants, with a third of our funding raised on international financial markets through the CEB’s trademark Social Inclusion Bond (SIB).

Since 2010, the CEB has provided some €8 billion – or around 17% of the Bank’s total lending volume (over that period) – for investment in social and affordable housing, ranging from family homes to dwellings for the elderly and student accommodation.

Allow me to highlight some examples of our projects, that were approved last year.

First, here in Italy, the CEB agreed a €25 million loan to the City of Reggio Emilia to support the transformation of an impoverished central area into an inclusive and affordable urban neighbourhood. This will be achieved by constructing social and affordable housing units alongside community facilities, as well as investments in mobility solutions.

Second, in Spain, the CEB provided a €100 million loan, backed by an InvestEU guarantee, to the Institut Català de Finances for the development of social housing in Catalonia. This project will benefit more than 4 000 migrants, homeless persons and victims of domestic and gender-based violence.

Last, but definitely not least, let me cite Ukraine, which became the CEB’s 43rd member country in June 2023.

The CEB has approved four projects in Ukraine since accession, of which one in the housing sector. Known aptly as HOME (H-O-M-E), this project supports the mechanism for compensation for destroyed residential properties established by the Government to target urgent housing needs. Under HOME, priority is given to the most vulnerable individuals and families, including combatants, persons with disabilities and large families. CEB financing, 70% of which has been disbursed in August, has already provided over 2 000 families with a new home.

Beyond these recent loan projects, I would also like to highlight our successful Regional Housing Programme (RHP), a donor-funded programme implemented by the CEB. The programme closed at the end of 2023 after over a decade in operation. In that time, the RHP delivered over 11 000 homes to 36 000 vulnerable people who had been displaced by the Balkan War in the 1990s, and has been cited as a blueprint for others to follow.

The “new housing poor” is another increasingly fragile group the CEB is paying attention. These are people on low to middle incomes working in essential services, such as teachers and healthcare workers, as well as young adults and students who struggle to find decent affordable accommodation in the expensive housing markets that characterise many European cities. We are actively addressing this challenge, and cooperate with the EIB and National Promotional Banks and institutions to improve our effectiveness.

Indeed, partnerships are extremely important to the CEB to leverage respective competence, multiply financing sources and increase impact of operations. In 2020, our Bank, along with Caisse des Dépôts (CDC) and the European Investment Bank (EIB), joined forces with the Union Sociale pour l'Habitat (USH) to launch the European Alliance for Sustainable and Inclusive Social Housing partnership in France. The initiative has mobilised more than €3 billion over the past four years and, as such, is a prime example of what successful partnerships can achieve in the housing sector.

Homelessness is absorbing more of CEB’s attention, and with good reason: there are an estimated 1.2 million homeless people in Europe, and their human rights to housing must be upheld; the CEB has been working closely with the European Commission’s Directorate General on Employment (DG EMPLOYMENT) to tackle this homelessness scourge.

Along with the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless and others, the CEB is actively supporting DG EMPLOYMENT to implement EPOCH – the European Platform on Combatting Homelessness.

Through cooperation with member states, regions, local authorities and relevant NGOs and other actors on the ground, EPOCH is supporting Europe towards its ambitious target of eliminating homelessness by 2030 – we believe that, thanks to EPOCH, homelessness can at least be significantly reduced, and we are proud to be part of this effort.

We see EPOCH as a model for cooperation within the framework of the affordable housing plan being considered by the European Commission.

The mounting housing crisis and attendant social exclusion represent a fundamental risk for Europe’s social cohesion.

We can overcome this risk through coordinated, active, housing policies and careful financing by all relevant actors, including public subsidies for solutions targeted at vulnerable groups.

The CEB stands ready as Europe’s social development bank of choice to help advance this collective effort, by drawing on its almost 70 years of expertise in the sector, while mobilising its skills in social financing, investments and engagement across Europe.

Together, we can build a future where housing truly is a right for all.

Thank you.