ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a historical overview of policymaking at the European Union (EU) level to contextualize its impact on the renewed housing question at an urban scale. While the EU involves a highly complex and multifaceted array of institutions and initiatives, the chapter focuses on the European Monetary Union (EMU) and the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), owing to their direct relevance to the renewed housing question. The chapter historically shows that the EMU and the SGP play vital roles in reproducing a reality in which member states continually allocate their social surplus towards market exigencies over social need, especially with regard to surplus populations. It reveals how regional monetized governance strategies, which reflect the wider neoliberal governance strategies that the EU has been actively pursuing since the 1990s, have played important roles in reproducing surplus and scarcity.
