The Government of the Canary Islands continues to reinforce its strategy aimed at obtaining the approval of the European Union (EU) to limit the residence and purchase of housing in the archipelago by non-residents.
With this objective, President Fernando Clavijo will transfer his roadmap to face the demographic challenge to the General Assembly of the Islands Commission of the Conference of Peripheral and Maritime Regions (CPMR) of the EU, a summit of European territories that will be held in La Palma next week.
The intention of the head of the Canarian Government is to continue the "political and legal offensive" that he announced in the Debate on the State of the Nation to ensure that Brussels applies "specific and proportionate" regulatory changes that contribute to curbing the strong population growth experienced by the islands.
Fernando Clavijo already conveyed this position of the regional Executive to the Vice-President of Cohesion and Reforms of the European Commission, Raffaelle Fitto, at the summit of the Outermost Regions (ORs) that took place on the island of Reunion last week.
At this meeting, the representative of Brussels announced the renewal of the OR strategy to update it and adapt it to the new challenges, which will be based on pillars such as defense, water, energy, competitiveness and housing. This reform means for the President of the Canary Islands, "a window of opportunity" for the archipelago to limit the residence and purchase of homes by foreigners.
In fact, the representative of Brussels was open to studying, within the framework of this new OR strategy, responses to the demographic pressure and housing emergency experienced by the archipelago.
This is the first time that this negotiation has been officially opened, a line of work that the head of the Government of the Canary Islands will also convey in La Palma to the European territories with which the Canary Islands shares strategies and that have also supported the autonomous government's 'Responsible Islands' project.
The Islands Commission is one of the six bodies of the Conference of Peripheral and Maritime Regions. It brings together 18 European regional island authorities located in the Mediterranean, Baltic, Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. These territories represent a population of 15 million. The main objective of this Commission is to urge the European institutions and the Member States to pay special attention to the islands, recognize the permanent disadvantages and vulnerabilities resulting from their insularity and apply the policies that best suit their condition.
President Clavijo attended last year's meeting of the Islands Commission held in Gonzo (Malta), while the Deputy Minister of the Cabinet of the Presidency, Octavio Caraballo, represented the Canary Islands at the meeting held in April 2024 in the Azores. Now it will be La Palma who will host the first meeting of 2025 in which the islands seek to unify and relaunch their common strategy before Brussels.
