Elections for the European parliament are less than a month away and far-right parties are predicted to make significant gains in many of the bloc’s 27 member states. The dire shortage of housing, leading to rising rents and property prices, is becoming a unifying focus for voters’ discontent with their current political leaders.
The issue has sparked protests from Amsterdam to Prague and Milan, as the Guardian’s Europe correspondent, Jon Henley, reports. The data is undeniably worrying as young Europeans spend up to 10 times an average salary on rent and mortgage payments, and big cities from the Baltic states to the Iberian peninsula have registered average property price rises of close to 50%. As a result more EU residents live with their parents for longer and put off life-decisions later into adulthood.
While housing does not fall within MEPs’ remit, it is a visible locus for the sense of social unease that has beset the whole bloc and has become a pivot for the far right to turn on racialised minorities. But as European community affairs correspondent Ashifa Kassam discovers, it is those communities that are doubly penalised through discrimination from landlords who, research has shown, turn away potential renters with “foreign” surnames. The political and social ramifications of the housing crisis in Europe is mirrored elsewhere across the globe and is a subject we will return to in the Guardian Weekly in this year of elections.
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Five essential reads in this week’s edition
1
Spotlight | ‘I can’t kill’
As the war stretches on, there are few eager recruits and Kyiv’s armed forces are short of soldiers. Luke Harding meets the men attempting to evade conscription.
2
Spotlight | Is great ape tourism to blame for killing off chimps?
Viruses that only cause common colds in humans are devastating populations of chimpanzees and gorillas, finds Rachel Nuwer.
3
Feature | The world according to Jason
Why do some people get angry about Covid vaccines or worry about chemtrails or the Great Reset? George Monbiot sits down with his local conspiracy theorist to find out.
4
Opinion | How do we navigate this age of confusion?
Timothy Garton Ash on what history might usefully teach us in an era of increasing global instability.
5
Culture | ‘Disability can be your power’
Arthur Hughes tells Lucy Webster about his breakthrough role as Richard III and his new screen persona as Shardlake, the late CJ Sansom’s 16th-century detective-lawyer.
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What else we’ve been reading
With starring roles in both tennis-themed love triangle drama Challengers and magic realist fable La Chimera, Josh O’Connor is having a moment. I enjoyed Tim Lewis’ interview with the British actor – previously best known for his role as Prince Charles in The Crown – about becoming famous during lockdown, going off-grid and his love of gardening. Clare Horton, assistant editor
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Other highlights from the Guardian website
• Audio | Non-doms are threatening to leave. Should they be convinced to stay?
• Video | ‘The Greens are our enemy’: What is fuelling the far right in Germany?
• Gallery | Jumpin’ Johannesburg: Soweto’s Afropunk skaters
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