The legal status of outermost region (OR) of the Canary Islands within the European Union provides the Archipelago with annual revenues of around 379 million euros, an amount resulting from dividing by seven the 2,655 million euros that the islands will receive from ordinary funds in the current multiannual EU budget framework (2021-2027) for that concept.
The vice president and Minister of Finance, Budgets and European Affairs, Román Rodríguez, has highlighted the importance of a status that is shared with eight other territories far from the European Union, "but among which we hold the leadership in economic and demographic terms."
Rodríguez recalled that the Canary Islands has obtained a "very good position" in the distribution of ordinary European funds planned for the period 2021-2027, so that the Islands will have received about 5,075 million euros at the end of the cycle.
The vice president stressed that just over half of this amount corresponds to the Canary Islands for being an outermost region, which gives an idea of the relevance of this condition "for all territories, but especially for us."
Specifically, they point out from the Ministry that the largest OR contribution corresponds to the allocation of agricultural funds from the Program of Specific Options for Remoteness and Insularity (POSEI), which amounts to 1,878.9 million euros. This is followed by the resources of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), whose allocation by OR amounts to 507 million, and that of the European Social Fund (ESF+), which reaches 185 million.
Next are the funds from the Madeira-Azores-Canary Islands cross-border cooperation program, which has a global allocation of 169 million euros, but which, for the sole purpose of guiding the calculation made on the OR impact, has been divided among the three territories, with the result of 56 million euros for each.
Finally, the Ministry points out that the European Union will release about 28 million euros to the Canary Islands for its OR status within the Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund.
The vice president indicated that the ordinary funds of the European Union "are more decisive than the resources released on an extraordinary basis and insisted that, beyond the figures, the relevance of the OR condition also lies in the adaptation of European policies to the singularities of territories with permanent and evident structural difficulties."
These adaptations, which not only have regulatory support in Article 349 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, but also the legal support of the EU Court, "are relevant to contribute to the economic and social development of the Archipelago."
The Ministry adds that both the ordinary funds from the EU due to the OR condition and the extraordinary Next Generation EU funds should be taken into account, whose estimate amounts to about 2,400 million euros, 630 from React EU to be executed until December 2023 and another approximately 1,750 from the MRR executable until the end of the year 2026.
