The President of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, has asked this Thursday in Brussels that the new European Commission support more investments for water desalination processes, in order to face the water crisis that this outermost region of the European Union (EU) is experiencing.
At the end of a speech by the president in a debate in the plenary session of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR), Clavijo told EFE that, at present, the islands are facing the water deficit with desalinated water, a process that consumes "a lot of energy", so he aspires to link water desalination with the use of renewable energies, in order to contribute to the European decarbonization strategy for 2050.
"If water is now a vital resource for Europe, in the case of the Canary Islands, as an outermost region in the south of Europe, it is fundamental," he said.
For this reason, Clavijo has asked the European Commission to approve a budget strategy in its next term that allows the outermost regions to "opt for financing" to face the construction of these infrastructures.
"These are investments of many resources, many millions of euros, and for those outermost regions that in practice all have difficulties because they are islands, we would need that financial support to undertake these infrastructures," the president stressed.
Clavijo spoke in a debate on sustainable water management held in the plenary session of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) in which the cities and towns of Europe demanded that water treatment be a strategic priority in the next term, with the creation of a 'Water Commissioner', to achieve an integrated approach in European policies.
In the same debate, Clavijo stressed the importance of this resource, especially for a territory that is "remote, fragmented and outermost" such as the Canary Islands, and asked the European Commission to provide solutions for the effects of drought in the primary sector.
