Gdańsk 2025: building power on a shifting ground
The European Action Coalition gathered this June in Gdańsk—four dense days of debate, strategy, and affirmation that our struggles, from Lisbon to Belgrade to Berlin, are not isolated battles but fronts in a shared continental fight. Hosted by comrades on Poland’s Baltic coast, the meeting was rooted in a place where tenant organizing is young but fierce, where evictions are escalating, and where the collision of housing precarity, rising repression, and climate breakdown is impossible to ignore. This local reality set the tone: urgency, creativity, and a refusal to let fear—or fragmented ownership models—dictate the limits of our imagination.
Reclaiming internationalism in housing struggles
A major thread throughout the meeting was the reflection on this year’s Global Housing Action Days. The message was clear: a global campaign still matters, maybe more than ever, but we need time, trust, and a genuine transnational structure that doesn’t reproduce Euro-American dominance. Groups from the Global South had reminded us sharply: coordination must be co-written, not imposed, and resources must flow where they are needed most.
Across the Coalition, comrades spoke about overloaded local calendars, clashes with national campaigns, and the difficulties of tying local pain to global calls. But no one questioned the necessity of shared action. We recognized the need to anchor global mobilizations in concrete enemies—vulture funds, touristification giants, financial actors concentrating land and homes at planetary scale. The call for greater clarity, more preparation time, and a truly collective global structure is the work ahead.
Taking aim at Real Estate Power: anti-MIPIM and beyond
We also assessed the anti-MIPIM campaign, that annual moment when the world’s real estate profiteers celebrate themselves behind velvet ropes in Cannes. Mobilizing there has always been a challenge—Cannes is hostile terrain for movements—but the Coalition reaffirmed that exposing real estate power is essential.
The message emerging from Gdańsk: anti-MIPIM actions must grow beyond Cannes itself. Pressure must be applied in our own cities—against mayors, developers, financiers who attend the fair, against the same chains of ownership that bind us across countries. Housing struggles are already investigating financialized actors; anti-MIPIM can be the connective tissue that ties it all together.
Entering the EU arena without illusions
The Coalition has taken tentative steps into EU-level advocacy, confronting the newly created Affordable Housing Plan. Certain parliamentary groups have opened doors to us—others tried to shut them immediately. Our position is uncompromising: EU funds must not become a subsidy pipeline for private developers; public money must serve public housing and de-commodification, not deepen market control.
Even while knowing that the EU arena is built to neutralize dissent, comrades insisted that occupying that space is worthwhile. Not as a belief in technocratic salvation, but as a tactic of exposure—forcing confrontation with the powers shaping our cities and ensuring our movement speaks with its own voice, not through professionalized NGOs or real estate lobbyists.
Housing and Climate Struggles: joining forces against a shared crisis
One of the strongest political currents in Gdańsk was the deepening alliance between housing and climate movements. Climate collectives from across Europe joined us, insisting—with the clarity of those watching ecosystems collapse—that housing struggles are climate struggles.
From energy poverty and uninhabitable homes, to tourism-driven displacement, to construction’s enormous carbon footprint, our crises are intertwined. Both movements confront the same logical enemy: the system that extracts life and land for profit, that militarizes borders and budgets, and that leaves people freezing in winter and suffocating in summer.
Discussions revealed just how much we can learn from each other: the climate movement’s mastery of spectacle and disruption; the housing movement’s rootedness in mutual aid, working-class organizing, and defending people’s immediate survival. Gdańsk confirmed that when these forces merge, we gain new reach, new imagination, and new strategic depth.
Towards an International Rent Strike
One of the boldest commitments the Coalition has made is to prepare for an international rent strike. In Gdańsk, groups shared where they stand: some already organizing rent strikes in vertically owned buildings; others facing completely fragmented property markets or violent landlords; others working where rent strikes carry heavy criminal penalties.
But across all differences, there was agreement: rent strike is not a slogan—it is a direction of travel. It is both a refusal and a demand, a confrontation with the foundations of private property, and the clearest expression of collective power tenants hold.
The Coalition mapped what needs to happen next:
- building databases of property structures;
- legal protection strategies and solidarity funds;
- political campaigns to normalize the tactic;
- toolkits and training based on real frontline experience;
- and above all, organizing tenants long before the strike itself begins.
Gdańsk reminded us that rent strikes are not created by decree—they emerge from patient, militant base-building. And this is exactly what we are strengthening across Europe.
Keeping ourselves alive: funding, structure, and collective care
The internal discussions were honest: funding remains uncertain, administrative burdens grow, and the Coalition must balance militant independence with the resources needed for cross-border organizing. We approved a provisional budget that keeps core operations running, but working groups will need to seek their own funding to flourish.
The Coalition is also restructuring its legal form, now registered in Spain, and revising statutes to reflect our principles and protect our horizontal functioning. A new facilitator was elected, bringing new energy and commitment. These organizational questions may seem dry, but they are essential: our enemy is rich, interconnected, and relentless. We must be organized too.
Leaving Gdańsk: stronger, sharper, determined
What held all these threads together was a shared sense that our struggles sit at a crossroads. The far right rises, the climate collapses, militarism expands, and financial elites tighten their grip on land and housing. But across Europe, more tenants are organizing, more evictions are being blocked, more cities are resisting touristification, more homeless groups are claiming their own political voice, more alliances are being forged.
Gdańsk was a reminder that the Coalition is not a network of organizations—it is a growing force of people who refuse to be displaced, priced out, or policed into silence. We left with more clarity about our common enemies, more tools for building power, and a deeper commitment to transnational solidarity.
