The president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, considers it crucial that the nine outermost regions (ORs) and their three States fight together in defense of their specific status in the European Union.
In a letter in response to the one sent by the head of the Government of Madeira, Miguel Albuquerque, Clavijo invites the rest of the territories protected by article 349 of the Treaty to respond "in a coordinated manner" and "as one voice" to a proposal for a Multiannual Financial Framework 2028-2034 that "compromises the economic and social development" of the ORs.
The head of the Canarian Government fully agrees with that of Madeira on the concern generated by the content of the document prepared by the European Commission, a legislative and financial text that leaves the distribution of European funds in the hands of each State and eliminates the pools of specific resources for the ORs that currently exist and have been respected in all previous EU budgets.
Therefore, Fernando Clavijo warns that the application of the proposal presented by Brussels on July 16 represents "an inadmissible step backwards to the specific treatment that the outermost regions have received until now to alleviate their obvious disadvantages, recognized rights that have been respected for decades in the EU".
In particular, the president of the Canary Islands agrees with his Portuguese counterpart in denouncing the "seriousness" of the consequences that the "omission of specific measures that recognize the structural and permanent limitations that affect our outermost regions" would have on the ORs.
In his opinion, "the absence of additional allocations in the ERDF and the ESF+, as well as the lack of a budget line dedicated to POSEI and aid for additional costs in the fisheries sector, constitute unacceptable setbacks that compromise the economic and social development of our territories".
Clavijo indicates in his letter to Albuquerque that, faced with this "threat", the nine ORs and their three States -Spain, France and Portugal- must "respond decisively and quickly, but above all with unity to defend our common interests".
To this end, the head of the autonomous government proposes to the president of Madeira the creation of a front that allows "to articulate a joint position before the European institutions, with the aim of guaranteeing a fair, coherent and stable treatment for all the ORs in the future financial and legislative framework".
The objective, Clavijo adds in his letter, is to work so that the ORs continue to be considered as a bloc as regions that require specific treatment and funds. "I am convinced that only through unity and firmness can we ensure that the European Union maintains its commitment to our regions, as established in article 349 of the Treaty," explains the president to guarantee that the Government of the Canary Islands is "fully willing to collaborate in this initiative and to actively contribute to the development of a joint strategy that allows us to defend our rights and needs".
More than 4.6 billion at stake
The response to the letter that the president of Madeira sent last week is in addition to the one that Fernando Clavijo sent on July 31 to the president of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen. In this letter, the head of the Canarian Executive conveyed to the highest European leader his "deep concern" about the content of the new Multiannual Financial Framework and the negative effects that its application would have on the archipelago, for which he requested the shielding of direct funds to the outermost regions.
Clavijo warned Von der Leyen that the EU's Financial Framework proposal for the period 2028-2034 leaves the distribution of resources in the hands of the States, which "undermines fifty years of a cohesion policy built with and for the European regions that are closest to the citizens and those that have known how to use these European funds to improve economic convergence and the quality of life of their citizens".
This change of model leaves in the air, at the expense of what the State decides, the funds that the archipelago had guaranteed as an OR. In the 2021-2027 Financial Framework, the Canary Islands have directly allocated just over 4.6 billion euros for their status as an outermost region. In addition, from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Social Fund (ESF), the islands receive 2.73 billion euros in the current budgetary period, while in the Program of Specific Options for Remoteness and Insularity (POSEI) they have allocated 1.878 billion euros.