TENLAW: Tenancy Law and Housing Policy in Multi-level Europe

This project has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 290694

Private tenancy law is existentially affecting the daily lives of European citizens, as about one third of them depend on rental housing.
That notwithstanding, it constitutes a nearly blank space in comparative and European law. This is due to its national character, its political nature
and its embeddedness in widely diverging national housing policies, which ultimately reflect different welfare state models. At the same time,
however, different parts of EU law and policy do affect tenancy law significantly, albeit indirectly. Thus, EU social policy against poverty and social
exclusion extends to selected issues of housing policy.
EU non-discrimination rules extend to the provision of housing, and several consumer law directives apply to tenancy contracts, too.
Moreover, if the Common Frame of Reference were one day to develop into an optional instrument, tenancy law issues now regulated by
national general contract law might be covered as well - though without any legislator having co-ordinated the ensuing juxtaposition of
European contract law and national tenancy regulation. Against this background, this project sets out to provide the first large-scale comparative
and European law survey of tenancy law. In a first step, it analyses national tenancy laws and their embeddedness in, and effects on,
national housing policies and markets. In a second step, the effect of EU legislation on national housing policy in general and national
tenancy law in particular will be analysed in a comparative perspective. In a third step, a proposal for a better co-ordinating role of the EU
in tenancy law and housing policy, in particular through an OMC process developing common principles of good ¡±tenancy regulation¡±, will be designed.
This research matches well several priorities of the Stockholm programme given tenancy law's intimate relation to social human rights and a system of
law and justice working for the benefit of European citizens, in particular vulnerable groups.

Project Data

(Theme SSH.2011.5.2-2 SSH.2011.2.1-2)
Project duration: 01. April 2012 until 01. October 2015
Project budget (EU contribution): € 2.692.526,-

Work Packages

Work Package 1 - Consortium Management

Objective: Academic and technical management of the consortium and assessment of progress and results.

Work Package 2 - Conception of Plan-Questionnaire

This WP will be led jointly by University of Pisa (Italy) and ZERP (University of Bremen, Germany).
Draft of:

• final version of plan-questionnaire for national reports to be elaborated
• guidelines on how to answer the national reports
• sample report on a country yet to be determined as guidance for national reporters.

Work Package 3 - National Reports

This WP will be jointly led by ZERP (University of Bremen, Germany), Universtiy of Tartu (Tartu, Estonia) and Universitat Rovira I Virgili (Tarragona, Spain).
Objectives: Drafting national reports on the basis of plan-qestionnaire.

Work Package 4 - Comparisons and Role of EU & Dissemination of Project Results

This WP will be led jointly by ZERP (University of Bremen, Germany), TU Delft (Delft, Netherlands) and Metropolitan Research Institute (Hungary).
Objectives: Comparative analysis and analysis of the role of the EU.

• Intra-group comparisons of national systems
• Consortium-wide comparison
• Analysis of a possible role of the EU in tenancy law
• Elaboration and implementation of a results dissemination strategy