Portugal caps rents, gives away vacant flats & suspends VAT on basic foodstuffs

Publicerad denFörfattareneuezeit.at

Inflation is driving more and more unexpecting people into poverty. The Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Greens nevertheless refuse to take action against the skyrocketing prices. The Portuguese government shows that there is another way: it already capped rents last year. Recently, Portugal has started renting out vacant flats and suspended VAT on 44 basic foodstuffs.
Between 2017 and 2022, rents in Portugal increased by 42 percent. The country is one of the poorest in Western Europe. Although the government only raised it in December, the minimum wage is just 760 euros a month. More than half of workers earn less than 1000 euros per month.
The government of the socialist Prime Minister António Costa has therefore limited rent increases. Landlords can increase them by a maximum of two percent. Costa’s next step is to put about 730,000 vacant flats on the market. If a flat remains unoccupied for more than two years, Portugal will have it forcibly rented out.
Putting vacant flats on the market
Owners of vacant flats receive a rental offer from the municipality, to which they must respond within ten days. If they do not accept the offer, they have another 90 days to rent out the flat or use it themselves. If the owners continue to do nothing, “municipalities proceed with the compulsory leasing”, according to the planned law. In this case, the municipality manages the flat and, if necessary, carries out renovation work to make it habitable. They then put the flats on the market for five years at low rents. According to the government, rents may not exceed 35 per cent of the family income. The income – minus the renovation costs – is paid out to the owners. There is an exception for properties that registered as tourist enterprises or local accommodation establishments. Flats that are currently being worked on or are about to be sold are also excluded.
Austria: ÖVP & Greens fueling inflation instead of relieving the burden on tenants
In Austria, the situation is different. Here, too, the government discussed a rent brake at the end of February. In the end, however, the ÖVP and the Greens opted for a housing cost subsidy. While 250 million euros will be paid out as a one-time payment, the increased rents remain the same or rise further in the future. Moreover, the housing cost subsidy ends up back with the landlord after the rent payment. The inflation rate in Austria in February was 11 per cent. Tenants not only have to pay higher prices for energy and electricity like everyone else, but also higher rents.
Gabriel Felbermayr, head of the Economic Research Institute (Wifo), also criticises the government’s approach. “I thought it was clear by now that more and more new cash transfers can cushion social hardship, but do not dampen inflation, instead they even fuel it”. The state does not have these 250 million euros and has to borrow them on the capital markets; if you put new money into the economy, it drives up prices, Felbermayr said. In his view, the rent brake was a way to get out of the price spiral.
Portugal suspends VAT
The government in Portugal on the other hand, is not only putting vacant flats on the market, it is also curbing rising inflation by suspending VAT. For the time being, it is suspending VAT on 44 basic foodstuffs for six months. If necessary, it wants to extend this period. This measure is part of an agreement with producers and retailers to stabilize prices as soon as possible. The government also foresees financial support for farmers and livestock in this framework. The suspension of VAT will make bread, eggs, meat, oil, yoghurt, fish and cheese, among other things, cheaper and more affordable for Portuguese households.
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Dutch startup uses air bubbles to remove plastic from rivers

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Dutch startup “The Great Bubble Barrier” has been building “air curtains” and removing tons of plastic from rivers since 2017. The technology is simple and promising. With the help of pipes in the water, a curtain of air is formed. Fish and other river dwellers can swim through it, while plastic waste is intercepted. 
The Amsterdam-based startup has been working on the technology behind the so-called “bubble barrier” for seven years. Initial pilot tests started in spring 2017, and the first filter system has been in place on the River IJssel in the Netherlands since November of the same year. Even tiny pieces of plastic with a diameter of one millimetre can be fished out of the water with it. The startup is currently testing whether even smaller plastic particles, i.e. less than 0.05 millimetres, can be filtered with the air barrier.
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Simple technology, clean rivers, healthy people
The way the air barrier works is simple. Pipes at the bottom of a river or canal pump air into the water. Combined with the current, the plastic pollution is collected together on one bank. From there, the plastic goes into a collection system. Then the trash is separated and can be disposed of properly. The start-up’s invention would also be great outside the Netherlands, because Austria’s rivers are also full of trash.
The WWF reports that almost two-thirds of Austria’s waters need to be “cleaned up.” Only 15 percent are still in “very good” condition, the paper states. Reasons for the pollution include the heavy construction density of some regions, as well as the industrial usage – such as sewage disposal or cargo shipping – of rivers. Environment Minister Gewessler (Green Party) complained about the “littering of our environment and waters”, but the interim report of the “Action Plan Microplastics” is still pending.
A stream of air bubbles propels the trash into a collection bin (Photo: The Great Bubble Barrier®)
Nearly 80 percent of plastic pollution in the sea comes from rivers
The technology from Holland not only holds promise for cleaning up freshwater streams, but also contributes to the cleaning of the oceans. Around 80 percent of plastic in the world’s seas comes from rivers. Currently, it is estimated that there are between 100 and 150 million tons of trash in the oceans. More than three-quarters of this is plastic. Every year, rivers wash between five and thirteen million tons more into the seas. Four million tons come from just ten major streams.
“We tested for six months in Amsterdam, and during this period we removed around 85 kilograms of plastic per month from the water,” say the founders of “The Great Bubble Barrier.
Projected over a year, that’s more than a ton of plastic waste. This is good not only for the environment, but also for people. Because the trash doesn’t just stay in the water. Fish and other sea creatures eat the plastic pollution. These then get back into the human organism via food, and there the – so called – microplastics can even lead to hormonal changes. Clean oceans, intact environment, healthier people – that seems to be the promise of the air curtain technology from the Netherlands. Läs mer…