EU-CIEMBLY Policy brief. What citizens' assemblies add to Europe's housing agenda: Housing evidence and deliberative design, lessons from the EU-CIEMBLY pilots

The EU housing agenda is moving from the agenda-setting to the legislation and implementation phase: the European Commission presented the Affordable Housing Plan in December 2025 and the Affordable Housing Act on September 9 2026, that includes a Commission Recommendation on housing affordability and supply in areas under housing stressand a proposal for a Regulation establishing a framework for measures in Member States to safeguard housing affordability and availability. This proposal now enters the ordinary legislative procedure, at the same time as the European Housing Alliance is creating a new multi-level forum for policy delivery. The question that stands is, therefore, not only what measures are being adopted, but whose experience informs their design, amendment and implementation.

What this agenda still lacks is structured, deliberated input from the people that the crisis hits hardest. EU-CIEMBLY contributes three forms of evidence to this decision window. First, its 2026 citizens’ assemblies in Colchester and Cyprus produced 32 recommendations on affordability, housing stock, tenant protection, quality and accessibility, access to support, and housing governance. Second, the pilots tested an intersectionality-embedded deliberative method designed to bring overlapping forms of disadvantage into the same discussion rather than treating people as single-category stakeholders. Third, they make accountability part of participation: institutions are asked to respond publicly to recommendations and explain what will or will not be taken forward. The proposed Affordable Housing Act makes this input even more necessary. As tabled, it creates new decision points for national, regional and local authorities and surrounds them with transparency and judicial review safeguards; but, nonetheless, it does not require authorities to consult, let alone deliberate with, the residents concerned. The EU-CIEMBLY approach fills in this gap by allowing citizens, particularly the most affected, to contribute to Europe’s housing agenda.

The brief identifies five substantive housing priorities and one cross-cutting governance principle. It argues that EU-CIEMBLY should be used as a citizen-deliberated implementation test: do proposed measures work for people facing multiple barriers, are responsibilities and eligibility clear, and have unintended effects been considered? It recommends that the European Parliament and the Council use this evidence when deciding on the proposed Affordable Housing Act and add a resident engagement requirement to its procedural safeguards; that the Commission and Member States apply the same requirement in following up the accompanying Recommendation; that the European Housing Alliance create a standing channel for deliberative citizen input; that the EU-CIEMBLY participation method inform future housing engagement; and that institutions publish formal responses to the assemblies’ recommendations.