Those accustomed to measuring reality with numbers distrust slogans, even those they like. On July 15, 2026, the European Commission opened infringement proceedings against all twenty-seven Member States for failing to transpose the green homes directive within the deadline. Letizia Moratti, an MEP from the EPP, immediately claimed to have been right, reading that mass infringement as proof that it was an ideological directive. One might dismiss the phrase as propaganda, but this time beneath the slogan there is a real problem. Only it’s not an ideological problem, it’s a matter of numbers.
Directive (EU) 2024/1275, known to all as the Green Homes directive, requires the Italian residential building stock to reduce average primary energy consumption by at least 16% by 2030 and by 20-22% by 2035, compared to 2020 levels. Taken alone, these numbers are reasonable. The problem begins when looking at which buildings the directive should be applied to.
According to ENEA, about 70% of Italian residential buildings fall into the lowest energy classes, E, F, and G. It is on this worst 43% of the stock that the directive demands priority interventions, which at the European level the Commission estimates as 35 million housing units to be renovated by 2030. In Italy, this means tackling an old and fragmented stock, often owned by low-to-middle income families, that is, the part of the country least able to pay the bill.
Then there is the second number, the money. For the energy upgrading alone needed to meet the 2030 target, estimates hover around 85 billion euros, 84.8 according to the study center of the Geometers Foundation with CGIA Mestre, and similar figures come even from analyses commissioned by the construction industry, from Rockwool to Velux, which would have an interest in inflating them. Those who widen the estimate to the complete upgrading of the stock, like the Energy&Strategy of the Politecnico di Milano, reach 180 billion. In all cases, it is a figure comparable to what Italy has spent in three years on Superbonus, Ecobonus, and Home Bonus, with the difference that that season left a wound in public accounts that no government wants to reopen. And the real question remains unanswered: who pays.
The most telling fact, however, was not provided by politics. At the deadline of May 29, 2026, the last day to transpose the directive, none of the twenty-seven Member States was in compliance, and for this reason in mid-July Brussels sent all a letter of formal notice, with two months to respond. Italy, in that group, is in the worst position, with two procedures open: already at the end of 2025 it had not even sent the draft of its National Renovation Plan to the Commission, and for months the directive did not even appear in the European delegation law under discussion in Parliament. But this delay, this time, is not our fault.
When twenty-seven out of twenty-seven States, with governments of every color, different systems, and often opposing interests, all miss the same deadline they had known about for two years, the adjective “unrealistic” ceases to be a political accusation and becomes a technical observation. The delay of one country is national laziness. The delay of all is a flaw of the rule.
On the value of real estate, the reasoning must be done with some caution. From May 29, 2026, the scale of the Energy Performance Certificate changed: the new European classification assigns the letter G, the worst, always to the 15% of the least efficient buildings in the national stock. The market, to be honest, already prices efficiency by itself, and the price gap between a house in a high class and one in a low class is measurable without any obligation. The directive does not invent that discount, it photographs it, certifies it, and sets a date, passing it entirely onto the owners of the worst stock, that is, the less wealthy.
And these less wealthy people are worth looking at face to face. Just enter the historic centers of many Italian municipalities, including the one where I live: emptied over time by the usual families, today they are mainly inhabited by low-income households, often foreigners and almost always renting, inside some of the oldest and least efficient buildings there are. These are the houses the directive puts at the top of the intervention list, and they are also those in which no one really has an interest in spending.
The owner, very often a pensioner, who does not live there has no reason to invest, the tenant who lives there does not have the money to do so, and the increase in value that rewards those who renovate goes anyway to a house that is not theirs. The incentive is lost along the way, and the worst part of the stock remains stagnant. Something visible from any historic center, and evidently not included in any model in Brussels.
Not that the goal is wrong, to be clear. Buildings account for about 40% of European energy consumption and over a third of energy-related emissions, and decarbonizing them is serious business. The 2024 text, moreover, is already a watered-down compromise compared to what Parliament had voted, with softened intermediate targets and more exemptions. What doesn’t work is not the direction, but the gap between the table where targets are written and the construction site where someone should build them.
It is a paradox that often happens to this Europe, and to which I dedicated a chapter in the essay Vaticano Zero Day: the same machine that knows how to set the minimum fish size to the millimeter and force the cap to remain attached to the bottle, often under the push of this or that lobby, loses measure as soon as the stakes rise. On the length of a fish, the numbers always add up. On 85 billion of a country, much less so.
There is also another number, the least mentioned of all, which is industrial. Ordering by decree heat pumps, panels, and inverters means exploding a demand that the European industry alone cannot cover, because much of those technologies, solar foremost, are currently produced in Asia and especially China. So, while signing the decarbonization of its homes, Europe also signs a huge import order. To the financial bill that doesn’t add up is added one of industrial sovereignty, which weighs more. You protect the nodes, not the channels, and the nodes, here, we left outside the house.
The serious conclusion is neither to fold arms nor to toast an infringement that concerns all twenty-seven and changes nothing. It is to calibrate the targets on what can really be financed, built, and also produced, and to rebuild a stable incentive system before asking for results. After all, something is already moving: faced with such a general delay, Brussels is beginning to talk about corrections and greater flexibility, which is the polite way of admitting the numbers didn’t add up. The targets can still be debated. The numbers, instead, sooner or later come anyway.
