EU Proposes Short-Term Rental Rules: What Changes for Alojamento Local in Portugal

If you run an alojamento local (AL, Portugal’s short-term rental registration) or are buying a flat to let to visitors, the news from Brussels on 9 September 2026 changes nothing for you today. The European Commission proposed the Affordable Housing Act, a regulation that tells a national, regional or local authority how it may restrict short-term lets in a stressed housing market. It restricts nothing itself, it leaves primary residences alone, and it needs the European Parliament and the Council before it applies anywhere.

The rules that decide whether you can register an AL this year are still Portuguese: Decreto-Lei n.º 128/2014, amended in October 2024, and your own câmara’s regulation. Lisbon’s, in force since December 2025, is the one to read before you buy in the capital.

What did the European Commission propose on 9 September?

A framework, not a ban. The text is COM(2026) 599, a proposal for a regulation “establishing a framework for measures in Member States to safeguard housing affordability and availability”. It leaves the decision on whether to act, and which measures to adopt, with national, regional and local authorities. The Commission’s own questions and answers put it in one line: the regulation “does not ban or restrict short-term rentals”, and it “neither requires, prescribes nor recommends restrictions”.

It sets the tests an authority must pass before it restricts short-term lets on housing-affordability grounds:

• The area must be under housing stress. The price-to-income ratio must be at least 8, meaning the average-size home costs eight years or more of disposable income per head. The ratio must also have risen over the most recent ten years of data, and the authority must show that without the measure the pressure is unlikely to ease in the next three years, judged on population, housing supply and housing demand. At a ratio of 10 or more, the ten-year trend test does not apply.
• The effect must be proven. Short-term rental activity must have had a “significant adverse effect” on housing availability or affordability in that area for at least the three years before the measure, drawing, where it exists, on the platform data collected under the EU’s registration rules.
• The measure must be proportionate: confined to the stressed area, aimed at lets whose scale, frequency or commercial character actually remove homes from the long-term market, and no broader than needed. The authority has to show that a less restrictive measure would not work as well.
• Measures last at most five years, with a review before any extension.
• Anyone affected must be able to contest the authority’s assessment before a court.

The area can be a district, a municipality, a metropolitan area or a part of one. A measure covered by the Act no longer needs the notification the Services Directive would otherwise require. The press release says plainly that member states which acted have “been faced with legal challenges”.

Read together, the tests make a restriction harder to do badly, not easier to do. Housing Commissioner Dan Jørgensen’s line at the launch was that cities “shouldn’t fear that they can be dragged into court”.

Does anything change for my alojamento local today?

No. A Commission proposal has no legal force. It now goes to the European Parliament and the Council under the ordinary legislative procedure, and both can amend it. The Commission has given no date for adoption, and the text says only that it enters into force twenty days after publication in the Official Journal.

Your obligations are the ones you already had. An AL still needs its registration by comunicação prévia com prazo (advance notice with a deadline) on the Balcão Único Eletrónico, addressed to your câmara’s president; it becomes an RNAL number if the câmara does not object within 60 days, or 90 days in a contention area, per Turismo de Portugal’s AL guide. Since 20 May 2026 the EU’s separate short-term rental data regulation has applied as well: where a registration scheme exists, as Portugal’s RNAL does, the registration number has to appear on each listing, and platforms send the authorities activity data every month. Nothing in the 9 September proposal adds to that list.

Is my primary residence affected?

Not under this text. Article 5 confines any restriction under the Act to accommodation that is not the host’s primary residence, and the recitals call that exclusion a “minimum safeguard”. If you let your own home while you travel, the Act would not reach you, though a Portuguese municipal regulation can still set its own conditions.

Buyers get a second protection: any restriction on acquiring property that an authority adopts under the Act applies only to purchases made after the measure takes effect. The costs that do apply to every purchase are in our post on buying property in Portugal as a foreigner.

How do Portugal’s AL rules compare with the EU proposal?

Portugal already does most of this. The Portuguese Association for Short-Term Rental Accommodation (ALEP) told Lusa on 9 September that the legislation in force “already incorporates almost all the principles” in the proposal; its complaint was that the Brussels text “does not provide much clarity” on what counts as a justified restriction.

	EU proposal (9 September 2026)	Portugal today (DL 128/2014, as amended by DL 76/2024)
Who decides	A national, regional or local authority	The câmara, by municipal regulation
Trigger	Price-to-income ratio of 8 or more, rising over ten years, unlikely to ease in three	Áreas de contenção (contention areas): an overload of AL establishments that may justify restricting new ones, declared by municipal regulation and resting on a study of AL concentration and impact
What can be restricted	Lets of non-primary residences; acquisition or use of non-primary homes	New AL registrations: none in homes let residentially in the previous two years, limits relative to the housing stock, conditions on new numbers
Primary residence	Excluded outright	Not excluded: rooms let in the host’s own home are an AL modality (quartos); any exceptions are the municipal regulation’s to set
Review	Five-year maximum, then review	Contention areas re-evaluated at least every three years
Existing operators	Transitional arrangements required	Transfers of registrations are the rule again; limits may apply to new numbers in contention areas

Lisbon’s municipal assembly approved an amendment to the AL regulation on 2 December 2025, in force from 6 December. A parish or bairro (neighbourhood) where registered AL units are 10% or more of permanent homes is in absolute contention, and the whole municipality joins it if the citywide ratio reaches 10%; between 5% and 10% is relative contention. The council monitors the ratios monthly. AL is about 67% of the city’s tourist accommodation, by the council’s own count.

The honest difference is the trigger. Portugal’s councils act on the AL-to-housing ratio; the EU text asks for a price-to-income threshold plus three years of proven harm. Nobody has run Lisbon’s numbers against the Brussels test, and until the text is final there is nothing to run them against.

What happens next, and when?

There is no date. Parliament and the Council must both agree, both can amend the text, and the lobbying has already started. Skift reports that EU Travel Tech, which represents Airbnb, Booking and Expedia among others, called the text a weakening of single-market rules, and that the European Holiday Home Association said it “falls short of what it promises”. ALEP wants “justified restrictions”, “causal link” and “proportionality” defined before disputes land in national courts.

Jørgensen made his case with Lisbon: rents up 103% in ten years, which he called “very worrying”. A proposal is not law, and we will update this post when Parliament’s position or the Council’s general approach appears.

What should you do next?

• Buying to let? Start with buying property in Portugal as a foreigner: the 2026 IMT bands, and the Banco de Portugal’s 80% loan cap on anything that is not your own permanent home.
• Buying in Lisbon? Check the parish against the contention map before you make an offer; the Lisbon hub has the rent benchmarks that explain why the ratios exist.
• Weighing a long-term let instead? Portugal’s 2027 rent-update ceiling is the number a landlord can apply next year.
• Watching prices? Bank appraisals rose 15.2% in a year to July, which is the pressure these rules are about.
• Need an agent? Our directory lists property search and rentals firms we have dealt with ourselves.

This post is general information, not legal advice. Municipal AL regulations differ by council and change — verify the current rules with your câmara municipal and Turismo de Portugal’s AL guidance before you register or buy.