The European Parliament advocates for more transparency and harmonizing rules for vacation rentals in the EU

20-09-23

The European Parliament has agreed to call for more transparency and harmonised rules in the EU on future EU legislation on holiday rentals, in order to ensure coexistence between holiday homes and traditional rentals. 

In particular, Parliament's Internal Market Committee has finalised its position on launching negotiations with the Council on a directive to regulate holiday homes in the EU and require a register of platforms to be used to take measures in the sector.

The rules "should give platforms opportunities for growth, while respecting policy objectives such as affordable housing, protection of town centres and rural areas, and lead to safer and more sustainable tourism", say MEPs in their position.

MEPs call for simplified procedures on digital platforms to make it easier to share data and provide statistics to public authorities, who, with this data in hand, can push for housing and short-stay rental regulatory measures.

MEPs call for a simple, digital registration process for short-term rental housing, but want to strengthen the obligations of digital platforms to ensure that the information provided by hosts is "reliable and complete", and "that their registration number is clearly visible on a list".