MEPs of the Committee on Internal market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) vote on the raft Report on the proposal on data collection and sharing relating to short-term accommodation rental services. Extracts from the vote and statement by Kim VAN SPARRENTAK (Greens/EFA), Rapporteur.

Brussels

Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection

statement

vote

protection of personal data (T)

consumers' protection (T)

VAN SPARRENTAK, Kim (Greens/EFA, NL)

CAVAZZINI, Anna (Greens/EFA, DE)

Data collection and sharing relating to short-term accommodation rental services: extracts from the vote statement by Kim VAN SPARRENTAK (Greens/EFA, NL)

Atmosphere in the meeting room prior to the vote,5 shots

IMCO Chair Anna Cavazzini (Greens/EFA, DE) opening the vote on the report on Data collection and sharing relating to short-term accommodation rental services and giving the floor to the rapporteur

SOUNDBITE (English), Kim VAN SPARRENTAK (Greens/EFA, NL), Rapporteur, What we are doing with this file is we listen to the cities and the people living in regions with a lot of tourism and especially over tourism, and they have called upon us to make sure that when there are authorisation schemes in place, the cities will be able to actually enforce these rules. Because the cities felt they didn't have grip anymore on the amount of tourists coming to their cities because it became a free for all. And it was actually the platforms deciding how many tourists there would be. So I'm very happy that we now have this proposal from the European Commission deciding that on a European level we are making sure that the platforms have to share data so we actually know how many tourists come to cities.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kim VAN SPARRENTAK (Greens/EFA, NL), Rapporteur, And on a local level we will have systems in place that if there are illegal listings, the platform will have to take care of them. And when it comes to the improvements we made as a European Parliament, I'm very happy that we have made the proposal even more realistic to the reality on the ground, making sure that authorisation schemes are mentioned and they don't live in a void, legally speaking, and also that we are making sure that indeed if cities flag illegal listings that the platforms will have to take action.

The final vote is adopted with 31 votes in favour, none against and one abstention. The vote on entring into negotiations is also adopted.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kim VAN SPARRENTAK (Greens/EFA, NL), Rapporteur, The current problems we're seeing with short term rentals is that cities really don't have any grip on the amount of short term rentals they have in their city. So what is happening is that we see cases of mass over touristification, noisy, dirty neighbourhoods because there's not enough amenities to actually make sure that amount of tourist fits. Another major problem is that short term rentals are extracting affordable housing from the market and then renting them out for tourists, which means there's a huge housing shortage and it leads actually to an increase in rents.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kim VAN SPARRENTAK (Greens/EFA, NL), Rapporteur, So what this proposal is doing is making sure that cities can get grip again because the platforms have to share the data of who is there. But what we did as a parliament is also to make it easier if there are a lot of illegal listings on a platform to make sure that cities can ask platforms to make sure that these listings don't appear anymore. And we give a bit more responsibility to the platforms as well to make sure that they have less illegal listings on their platform.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kim VAN SPARRENTAK (Greens/EFA, NL), Rapporteur, I think it is actually absolutely fine if you want to rent out a room in your apartment because you want to earn a little bit more money. But we also have to be real and we have to take a root causes when it comes to the housing crisis in Europe. And we really see that these massive amounts of short term rentals in cities is actually extracting affordable housing from the market. So we have to tackle the root cause. But if you comply to all the rules of your municipality, you know, please go ahead and rent out your room if you want to.