The report, released by the team led by former Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa, gathered information from Deutsche Bank and revealed that citizens in Lisbon spend 116% of their salaries on housing.

The situation highlighted by Deutsche Bank takes into account prices for apartments in the centre of major European cities and average salaries. In Barcelona and Madrid, the housing ratio is 74%.

The three cities surpass cities with higher living standards, such as Vienna (37%), Luxembourg and Frankfurt (34%), or Helsinki (35%).

One Roof, Many Realities

The European Council report, entitled "One Roof, Many Realities: The Complex Housing Crisis in Europe," points out that this scourge is a "structural problem" in the European Union, according to the president of the European institution, António Costa.

Even though the housing crisis has "local characteristics and variations between regions," it is a problem across the EU, and the average housing price increased 58.33% between 2015 and the first quarter of 2025. Hungary is the country leading this growth (237%), followed by Portugal and Lithuania (147%), according to Eurostat data.

António Costa has warned this that the housing problem across the EU must be resolved, otherwise it will "decrease trust in democratic institutions" and competitiveness will suffer the consequences of this scourge.

Despite the "challenging geopolitical landscape," António Costa considered it "essential to also consider the daily concerns of EU citizens." At a joint press conference with the presidents of the European Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Council in Brussels, Belgium, Costa added that leaving this problem unresolved will lead to "negative consequences," affecting competitiveness and trust in institutions.

Therefore, the problem of access to housing, due to rising rental and purchase prices beyond families' means, will be discussed for the first time at a European Council meeting today. And for "various causes," the President of the European Council promised "various solutions."

Even though housing is a competence of each country in the European Union, Costa considered that it is possible to solve the problem with an EU-wide approach, pointing to the plan the European Commission is developing.

"Although it is a matter of national jurisdiction, it is crucial that, as European leaders, we discuss how we can complement our efforts," he maintained.

When asked what specific role the European Union, as a community bloc, can play, António Costa said that the "first contribution will be to give national authorities more leeway" to solve this problem by considering concrete realities, using, for example, European funds.

If countries want to invest in "short-term rentals, they need to be given tools to facilitate this," he argued.