Tenancy law has developed in all EU member states for decades, or even centuries, but constitutes a widely blank space in comparative and European law. This book fills an important gap in the literature by considering the diverse and complex panorama of housing policies, markets and their legal regulation across Europe. Expert contributors argue that that while unification is neither politically desired nor opportune, a European recommendation of best practices including draft rules and default contracts implementing a regulatory equilibrium would be a rewarding step forward.

This timely book provides readers with a detailed comparative survey of tenure innovation and diversification in Europe. Alternative and intermediate tenures, i.e., housing options beyond tenancy and homeownership, are examined as remedies to address the growing European housing crisis.

How should a landowner respond when a squatter occupies their land? This book discusses the issues focussing on vindicatio, possessory remedies and trespass, but also explores administrative procedures for their removal. In many cases, these actions derive from Roman laws, which are expertly explored in an introductory chapter. Also included is a chapter exploring human rights interventions in such actions. Twelve case studies offer an extensive and comparative analysis across sixteen European jurisdictions. The basic defendants covered are squatters taking over a home, environmental protesters, licensees and former tenants. The case studies include, amongst others, self-help; restitution; competing claims to ownership (and the relevance of registration systems to claims to ownership); adverse possession; neighbours; nuisance and encroachment.

In considering diffusion from a global perspective, this book provides timely new insights into its application in a variety of fields and at many levels of both legal and non-legal orderings. This collection contributes to the wider theoretical debate concerning the movement of law and legal norms by engaging with concrete examples of legal diffusion, in jurisdictions as diverse as Albania, the Czech Republic, Poland and Kuwait. These examples, taken together, provide a comprehensive illustration of the theoretical debates concerning the diffusion of laws and norms in terms of both process and form. This international, multi-disciplinary and multi-methodological volume brings together scholars from law and social science with experience in mixed and hybrid jurisdictions, and advances the conversation about legal and normative diffusion across the academy. It represents a robust challenge to many preconceived ideas about legal movement and, as such, will be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of Law, Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, Legal Education and comparative method.