EVICT Talk with Dr. Hector Simón-Moreno – The Potential Impact of Fundamental and Human Rights in Eviction Proceedings and the Right to Property: What are the Limits?

June 21st, 2021

The trend towards the financialisation of housing since the 1980s and the global financial crisis exposed a dramatic lacuna in the legal protection of the right to housing. Yet, the right to housing features national and international human rights instruments, such as the European Convention of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. These rights are increasingly finding expression in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (drawing on the Charter, the CJEU’s interpretation of EU consumer law is moving towards a recognition of housing rights as inherent components of consumer protection) or in the communications of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (which take into consideration the legal position of both tenants and squatters), as well as in national legislation due to the Covid-19 pandemic (eg. in Spain, even squatters have benefited from protection against evictions).

The issue at stake is how to strike a balance between the interests at stake: the right to property and the right to housing, ie. between the housing as an asset and housing as a human right. This also raises another question: how can property law rules be adapted to such growing influence of fundamental and human rights?

About the speaker

Dr. Hector Simón-Moreno is a postdoctoral researcher in civil law at the Rovira i Virgili University. He is a European doctor in the framework of the doctoral courses in Business and Contract Law (2005-07) and extraordinary doctoral award winner 2009-10. He is the author of various scientific publications, including two books (The optimization of the Spanish mortgage from a European perspective, Bosch (2011) and The process of harmonization of property rights in Europe, Tirant lo Blanch (2012)) and various scientific articles and book chapters. He is currently part of several research groups funded by both the autonomous, state and international levels. His main fields of research are property rights in general, and mortgages and trusts in particular. Since 2009 he has been working on a new line of research on housing.

The EVICT Monthly Talk Series takes place every third Thursday of the month. For the next talk, please visit our events page for further information.