by Jean-Luc Testault
PRAGUE - As much as 320 billion euros (426.1 billion dollars) is needed to renovate post-World War II apartment blocks across the European Union, according to a report published Tuesday in Prague.
Confronted with huge needs, EU housing ministers called on the European Commission to free up EU funds to finance part of the necessary work.
Already acute in some districts in western Europe, the rapid ageing of multi-dwelling buildings in Europe is even more worrying in the former communist countries.
"The problem is more important in the new EU member countries," emphasised Dutch Housing Minister Sybilla Dekker, who presented a lengthy report on the renovation of multi-dwelling buildings during a two-day conference in the Czech capital.
The European Union's annual budget currently amounts to roughly 100 million euros.
The ministers agreed to press the commission for talks on the question "as quickly as possible".
In a letter addressed to the European Commission, the ministers emphasised the renovation of apartment blocks would enable the EU to fulfil some of its priority objectives: growth, employment and energy savings.
"The refurbishment of housing and revitalisation of urban quarters in this context can make a major contribution to central EU-objectives such as growth, employment and especially energy efficiency and climate protection," the ministers said in a letter to be sent to the commission.
The use of EU funds, particularly structural funds aimed at aiding poorer regions, has been sharply restricted for housing improvements.
The Dutch report noted that most European countries had built massive housing blocks to replace homes destroyed during the Second World War and to meet the demands of urbanisation.
But the housing blocks have aged badly and the problem was particularly acute in the former communist countries of the EU, where more than one-third of the population lived in apartment blocks.
The Dutch report estimated it would take 40 years to renovate 8.7 million crumbling properties in the 10 new EU member states, and highlighted underfunded maintenace in the past.
"A lot of new home owners do not have enough resources to invest themselves or to provide the necessary minimum deposit for investment in maintenance and repair. Due to their low income they are also not able to pay the installment for a loan," the report said.
Opposed to individual property ownership, the communist regimes that ruled throughout central and eastern Europe for 40 years favoured the building of huge housing blocks, practically all of them built to the same mould.
More than one-third of the population in the post-communist countries which joined the EU last year lived in this kind of housing, compared with 15 percent in the formerly 15-state bloc.
While the number of dwellings per 1,000 inhabitants was 468 among the original 15 EU member nations, it was 355 in the 10 new EU states.
The percentage of multi-family dwellings was 55.8 percent in the new EU members compared with 47 percent in older EU countries.
More than one third of dwellings are high-rise buildings in the 10 new members, compared with fewer than one in seven in the older states.
03/15/2005 20:02 GMT