Priced out

From Amsterdam to Milan, a lack of affordable housing is now a major political issue-and one that could push many younger voters towards extremist parties in upcoming EU elections

- Jon Henley

Spiralling rents and sky-high property prices risk becoming a key battleground of European politics as far-right and populist parties start to exploit growing public anger over the continent's housing crisis, experts have said.

Weeks before European parliament elections in which far-right parties are forecast to finish first in nine EU member states and second or third in another nine, housing has the potential to become as potent a driver of far-right support as immigration.

"Far-right parties prosper when they can exploit the social gaps that emerge out of underinvestment and inadequate government planning... and when they can blame outsiders," said the UN's special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing.

"That's the situation many EU countries are now in," Balakrishnan Rajagopal told the Guardian. "The housing crisis is no longer affecting just low earners, migrants, single-parent families, but the middle classes. This is the social issue of the 21st century."

Shortages of affordable housing have sparked protests in Lisbon, Amsterdam, Prague, Milan and outside the EU - London, with young people in particular raging against rents swallowing half their incomes and mortgages 10 times an average salary.

The issue was a top concern for voters in last year's Dutch elections, won by the far-right Freedom party (PVV) of the anti-Islam Geert Wilders, and it played into the rise in support for Portugal's Chega party, which almost trebled its vote share in March.

"It's a theme that ticks a lot of current boxes" for far-right parties, said Catherine Fieschi, of the European University Institute. "It's easy to frame it as an elites-versus-the-people issue- and to claim migrants are being treated better than nationals."