European Dimensions of Residential Tenancy LawThis contribution presents the cooperative project ‘Tenancy Law and Housing Policy in the EU’ (www.tenlaw.uni-bremen.de) under the EU’s Seventh Research Framework Programme, which is coordinated by the Centre of European Law and Politics (ZERP) at Bremen University. The consortium is further composed of the Universities Southampton, Pisa, Tarragona, Lund, Katowice, Tartu, Celje, Delft and the

Abstract

Abstract Although one third of European citizens depend on rental housing, its legal regulation in residential tenancy law constitutes a nearly blank space in comparative and European Union law. This is due to its national character, its perceived political nature and its embeddedness in widely diverging national housing policies. At the same time, however, EU law and policies from other fields do affect tenancy law significantly, albeit indirectly and with little visibility. The present contribution tries in a first step to take stock of these influences, which range from social policy, competition law, consumer and contract law, conflict of laws, anti-discrimination and environmental law to the European Convention of Human Rights. On this basis, the potential for a European contribution to the field is examined in a second step. As regards European instruments, this contribution advises against legal harmonisation but recommends the extension of the existing open method of coordination mechanism in social policy to tenancy law. At the substantive level, a legal principle of ‘socio-economic balance’ is sketched out. This means that national legislators, regulators and judges should design viable compromise solutions taking into account party interests as well as macroeconomic and social criteria.