The curse of foreclosures is tormenting the peoples of Europe. High unemployment levels and wage cuts have put people under enormous economic pressure. Many families are struggling just to make ends meet.

In Cyprus, due to the absence of a comprehensive housing policy, but also because of the existing legislative framework, the situation is particularly tragic with homeless people dying abandoned and helpless, while the danger of primary family home foreclosures hangs over hundreds of poor people’s families. The decision to set up a platform for conducting electronic auctions by banks will result in faster and more impersonal foreclosure procedures, minimizing the rights of borrowers. This is a crime against the Cypriot people, an organized effort to serve the interests of the banks at the expense of society.

The GUE/NGL has have taken a clear position against the profiteering of banks, against the illegal charges imposed and foreclosures of primary family homes taking place in the EU. We are fighting to put an end to austerity policies that drive people into poverty. Furthermore, we are fighting to protect the human right to housing, the right to take recourse to justice and, in particular, the right to a dignified life.

MEP Giorgos Georgiou has raised the issue of the the right to housing and recourse to justice with the European Commission through the urgency procedure, calling for immediate action to put an end to human rights abuses, in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and European Convention on Human Rights.

We express our solidarity with the people and movements struggling against foreclosures across Europe. We support the struggles they are waging and we struggle with them against foreclosures. Against the mercilessness and ferocity of the banks. Against the neoliberal austerity policies that have devastated peoples’ lives. We demand measures to be taken to change housing law at a national and European level, for the protection of the right to housing and an end to evictions.