Europe's housing crisis is locking a generation out of homeownership - and the construction industry built to fix it is struggling to compete
Europe’s housing shortage cannot be resolved by halting construction, even as demographic decline shapes long-term policy thinking, says a senior industry official.
Frank Hovorka, technical and innovation director at the French Real Estate Federation (FPI), pushed back against arguments gaining traction in some policy circles that new building should be suspended in favour of retrofitting existing stock. The case for a construction moratorium holds that new building materials carry heavy carbon costs and that a shrinking European population reduces the need for additional homes.
Speaking at a Construction Products Europe workshop in Brussels on 9 June, Hovorka presented modelling based on France’s 2050 climate targets showing two viable pathways to compliance: a complete halt to construction, or continuing to build at a rate of 400,000 units a year.
He also challenged the sector’s instinct to focus narrowly on building fabric. “In a simplistic way, it’s better to have an energy-inefficient building with people coming by subway than a low-emission building with people coming by car using fossil fuels,” he said.
