Link: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2020-09/cp200111en.pdf

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Court of Justice of the European Union

PRESS RELEASE No 111/20

Luxembourg, 22 September 2020
Judgment in Joined Cases C-724/18  Cali Apartments v Procureur général près la cour d’appel de Paris et ville de Paris and C-727/18 HX v Procureur général près la cour d’appel de Paris et ville de Paris
 
National legislation making the repeated short-term letting of accommodation to a transient clientele which does not take up residence there subject to authorisation is consistent with EU law

Combating the long-term rental housing shortage constitutes an overriding reason relating to the public interest justifying such legislation

Cali Apartments SCI and HX each own a studio apartment located in Paris (France). Those studio apartments, which had been offered for rent on a website, had, repeatedly and without prior authorisation from the local authorities, been let for short periods to a transient clientele.

The tribunal de grande instance de Paris (Regional Court, Paris, France), hearing an application for interim relief, then, subsequently, the cour d’appel de Paris (Court of Appeal, Paris, France), on the basis of the French Construction and Housing Code, ordered the two owners to pay a fine and ordered that the use of the properties in question be changed back to residential. That code provides, inter alia, that, in municipalities with more than 200 000 inhabitants and in the municipalities in Paris’ three neighbouring departments, change of use of residential premises is subject to prior authorisation and the repeated short-term letting of furnished accommodation to a transient clientele which does not take up residence there constitutes such change of use. That code also provides that that authorisation, granted by the mayor of the municipality in which the property is located, may be subject to an offset requirement in the form of the concurrent conversion of non-residential premises into housing. Again according to that code, a decision adopted by the municipal council sets the conditions for granting authorisations and determining the offset requirements by quartier (neighbourhood) and, where appropriate, by arrondissement (district), in the light of social diversity objectives, according to, inter alia, the characteristics of the markets for residential premises and the need to avoid exacerbating the housing shortage.

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