Housing governance and the myth of decentralization: layers of Europeanisation in Portugal

This article analyzes how the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) reshapes housing governance in the EU, using Portugal’s unprecedented housing allocation as a critical case revealing structural Europeanisation dynamics. Despite housing’s national competence, RRF’s centralized performance-based model exerts profound influence through milestone compliance over domestic governance arrangements. The research utilizes a multifaceted approach, incorporating document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and an online survey, to comprehensively assess developments across six dimensions of governance. The RRF conditionalities result in alterations to Local Housing Strategies, transitioning from strategic planning (logic of appropriateness) to procedural gatekeepers (logic of consequences). While these dynamics are rooted in the Portuguese case, they reflect structural features of the RRF’s governance logic, demonstrating the limitations of Europeanization through funding alone, in the absence of administrative robustness and inclusive governance.