European citizens' initiative aims to prevent demolitions
The HouseEurope! Initiative seeks to create incentives and reshape legislation to make the renovation of existing buildings, rather than demolition, a standard practice across Europe.
HouseEurope! is a Europe-wide citizens' initiative. The European Citizens' Initiative allows people to petition the European Commission to propose legislation on issues that are important to them. Once at least one million signatures have been collected, the Commission will take it on board.
The initiative is backed by a group of prominent architects and academics, including Arno Brandlhuber, Ruth Schagemann and Charlotte Malterre-Barthes.Demolition has major impacts across Europe
HouseEurope! aims to stop the accelerating wave of demolition in Europe. Currently, one building is demolished every minute in Europe. At the same time, the European Union is striving to become carbon neutral by 2050.
At the current rate of demolition, by 2050, Europe will have demolished around 2 billion square metres of existing buildings. This is more than the entire building stock of Paris, for example.
Demolition has major ecological impacts, but it is also a key element in ensuring an adequate supply of housing. According to the initiative, demolition will lead to a growing housing crisis across Europe and a shortage of affordable housing, even though demolition and new construction are often paradoxically justified by the need for new housing.
The Power to Renovation – Question of Values document produced by the initiative provides a background to the different values associated with demolition and renovation.
Goals of the initiative
The initiative aims to create a more effective assessment framework for comparing the cost calculations and environmental impacts of existing and new construction. Current legislation, building standards, energy performance rating and financial subsidies create distorting incentives for demolition and new construction rather than renovation.
To change this situation, HouseEurope! proposes
- fiscal incentives to make renovation and the use of existing materials more profitable than demolition
- better calculations to assess the impact of renovation and new construction
- the inclusion of carbon dioxide sequestered in existing buildings in the assessment of the energy performance of buildings.
Sign the initiative to make a difference
To be submitted to the Commission, a citizens' initiative must collect at least 1 million signatures in total. The collection of signatures for the citizens' initiative is currently underway.
The deadline to sign the initiative is 31 January 2026. You can sign the initiative through this link and find our more about the initiative here.
