Tax the rich, cap the rents: the policy mix helping Europe’s left push back the far-right

There is a new left-wing recipe making the headlines: tax the rich and use the revenue to tackle the rising cost of living and strengthen public welfare services.

Europeans are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis and rising inequalities. Skyrocketing rents are kicking people out of their cities, while the wealthiest one percent have never been richer.

It is no surprise then that leftwing parties running on affordability and wealth redistribution platforms have been gaining ground.

In the last two weeks, leftwing parties have surged across Europe.

Die Linke’s Elif Eralp is set to be the new mayor of Berlin , and the Swedish left party Vänsterpartiet secured its best result in over two decades. Polls in France , Italy and Poland also show leftwing forces on the rise.

All these parties have a winning recipe in common: rent caps, progressive taxation and investing in welfare and education.

In Berlin, rents are now six times more expensive than 10 years ago. And only one-in-six people owns an apartment in Berlin.

Berlin has seen a 25-percent rise in the general price level since 2020, while wages nationwide have stagnated. In short, life gets more expensive, but wages are not keeping up.

This is not just a local issue in Berlin, but a widespread problem across Europe.

Roughly 1-in-12 people across the EU now spends at least 40 percent of their income on housing, according to Eurostat. 92.7 million people across the EU were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2025.

Across Europe, people have been linking the cost-of-living crisis and rising inequalities.

There is a stark, unfair contrast that Europeans are no longer willing to accept: people cannot afford rent and food, and are forced to accept cuts in welfare and education, while the wealthiest 0.001 percent alone, fewer than 60,000 multi-millionaires, control today three times more wealth than half of humanity combined, according to the World Inequality Report 2026 .

It is little wonder, then, that parties advocating for wealth redistribution are consistently growing in recent elections.

Taxing the rich was at the core of the Swedish left party Vänsterpartiet’s election campaign for the 13 September general elections, helping the party to 8.4 percent of the vote, its best result since 2002.

Since abolishing the inheritance tax in 2005 and the wealth tax in 2007, Sweden went from a country known to invest in welfare and social justice to a billionaires’ paradise .

And Swedish voters, in response, have called for the introduction of a "billionaire tax", targeting the top 500 wealthiest people in the country, whose fortunes exceed 1 billion kronor.

In Berlin, people have long urged their administration to make rents more affordable. They voted in a large majority (58 percent) in a referendum in 2021 in favour of returning housing to public hands. The referendum proposed that the Berlin State would buy back flats from the city's largest private real-estate companies, which had often used them for speculation.

It is no coincidence that the German left party Die Linke won the Berlin elections last Sunday. Elif Eralp, set to be the new mayor of Berlin, campaigned on implementing the referendum. She has also been advocating for a Mietendeckel (rent cap) to ensure housing is a right for all in Berlin.

In both Berlin and Sweden, the left is now seeking to govern in coalitions, keeping affordability, wealth redistribution, and investing in welfare and education at the core of their government agenda.

Whatever the future will hold, one thing is clear: across Europe, leftwing parties are putting this recipe into action, one campaign at a time, for a Europe people can finally afford.

Catarina Martins is a Portuguese MEP and co-chair of the European Left Alliance in the European Parliament

Malin Björk is a Swedish MEP and co-chair of the European Left Alliance in the European Parliament.