canary holiday rental law eu test row

NC-BC accuses Canary Government of inventing EU backing for holiday rental law

Compiled with the help of artificial intelligence, based on Spanish-language information. Source below the article.

A Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista (NC-BC) MP has accused the regional Canary Government of using non-existent European Union backing to defend its holiday rental legislation, Law 6/2025 on the Sustainable Regulation of Tourist Use of Housing, during Tuesday’s plenary session.

Demand for proof of EU assessment

Esther González called on the Minister for Tourism and Employment, Jéssica de León, to provide evidence of which European assessment the law has supposedly passed, arguing that it benefits large tourism operators at the expense of small property owners.

The minister made those remarks on 1 July during a visit to Brussels: “In the Canary Islands we have passed a law that has not only passed the EU test, but also offers a solution before our cities and towns become strained. It is not about restricting, it is about balancing,” the Canary Government said at the time.

Questions over which EU body carried out the test

During her oral question, Esther González asked the Government to specify what that assessment consisted of. “We are asking you to tell us which European Union body carried out this test, which European Commission department has those functions assigned to it, when the assessment was carried out, what mark it received, what criteria were used and, above all, whether there is a document recording that assessment and its results,” the nationalist MP said.

González criticised the minister for failing to answer the questions put to her, despite showing her a page from a printed newspaper in which De León made the remarks in question. The NC-BC MP maintained that this supposed European test does not exist.

Commission has never validated the law, says MP

She added that the European Commission has expressly stated that, neither orally nor in writing, is there anything to support it, and that at no point has it validated the holiday rental law or the Canary regulation on operating units. She accused the minister of having invented that European backing to sustain a law that the minister has turned into a political flag to benefit very specific interests.

The reality, according to the sectoral spokesperson, is clear: the companies that concentrate tourism operations are the ones who gain from this regulation. “The worst part,” she added, “is who loses: small property owners, also harmed by the regulation of operating units, which De León says she will change from the start of the parliamentary term, and here we still are.”

“It is those people whose ability to freely choose who operates their property, their home, you have annulled,” she denounced.

Contradiction with European law on operating units

The Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista MP also stressed that, in her view, there is a contradiction between that limitation and the European Union’s position on operating units. “The most ironic thing is that precisely that annulment of the free ability to choose is the restriction that the European Community identifies as contrary to European law when it analyses operating units,” she said.

Esther González called on the Canary Government’s Minister for Tourism and Employment, from Coalición Canaria and the Partido Popular, to stop manipulating the issue and to call things by their proper name.

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