EU rules to curb tourist rentals loom over Matera's boom

The European Union is set to lay out rules helping European cities curb short-term rentals such as Airbnb in a bid to tackle rising house prices, according to plans seen by AFP on Friday. The proposal, reported by The Local Italy, comes as tourism pressure mounts across the continent's most visited destinations.

For Basilicata, the timing is pointed. Matera, the region's UNESCO-listed cave city, has ridden a decade-long tourism boom since its 2019 stint as European Capital of Culture. Foreign coverage has long framed the Sassi — once called 'the shame of Italy' — as a case study in heritage-led reinvention.

But the same boom has strained the city's fragile interior. Short-term lets have multiplied in the ancient stone quarters, and housing costs have followed the tourist footfall upward. The EU's planned rules, still taking shape, would give municipalities new tools to limit platforms like Airbnb.

The EU measure, expected to be formalised in coming months, would allow cities to impose registration schemes, data-sharing requirements and caps on the number of days a property can be let. The Local Italy noted the plans are aimed squarely at the housing affordability crisis that has spread through southern European cities as tourism has recovered.

Matera's transformation has been dramatic. Once a symbol of post-war southern poverty, its cave dwellings are now boutique hotels and holiday lets. The city draws film crews — it stood in for ancient Jerusalem in a recent biblical epic — and visitors who come for the lunar landscape of the Gravina gorge.

Local officials have watched other Italian cities — Florence, Venice, Rome — grapple with the same tension between tourist revenue and resident displacement. Matera's population, like much of Basilicata, has long been in decline; the tourism economy has helped slow the exodus but has not reversed it.

The EU plan would hand Matera's administration powers it currently lacks. Under existing national rules, Italian municipalities have limited authority to restrict short-term rentals, a constraint that has frustrated mayors across the country as housing prices climb in tourist centres.

Analysts cited by foreign outlets have warned that unchecked short-term letting can hollow out historic centres, pushing permanent residents to the periphery and eroding the very authenticity that draws visitors. Matera's Sassi, carved into the rock over millennia, depend on a living community as much as on preservation orders.

The EU's move reflects a broader reassessment of mass tourism across the continent, with cities from Barcelona to Amsterdam introducing measures to protect residential housing. For Matera, the rules arrive at a moment when its tourism model — successful by most measures — faces questions about sustainability that its smaller scale has so far deferred.