Brussels © Götz

At the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (HABITAT II) in Istanbul in 1996, a total of 171 countries committed themselves in the Habitat Agenda to implement the goals and principles set out therein in their national legislation.

In 2006, on the initiative of the European board of directors of the Global Parliamentarians on Habitat under the presidency of Peter Götz, a comparative study examined how the goals and principles of the Habitat Agenda had been implemented in the national legislation of selected signatory countries in the ten years since the adoption of the Habitat Agenda.

The comparative study, which was compiled by Prof. Gerd Schmidt-Eichstaedt from the Institute for Urban and Regional Planning of the Technical University of Berlin at the request of the German Association for Housing, Urban and Spatial Development with the financial support of the Federal Government, determined how legislation had changed in the Federal Republic of Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Romania and Turkey. It was presented at the fifth European forum of the GPH in The Hague, the Netherlands, in May 2006 and at the World Urban Forum III in Vancouver, Canada, in June 2006.

In the two years thereafter, the former Warsaw Pact countries Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia were examined in the study. The final report was presented at the World Urban Forum IV in Nanjing, China, in November 2008 and at the meeting of the board of directors of GPH Europe in Brussels in March 2009.

The study reveals which countries have implemented their self-imposed commitments within the past ten years and which ones have not. Through this "revelation", political pressure for legislative action has increased.