Coalición Canaria has launched an institutional front to achieve the modification and updating of the standard transport costs in the Canary Islands authorized by the European Union and included in article 7 of the Economic and Fiscal Regime, and has requested councils and municipalities to make a "common cause" so that 100% of the transport of goods is compensated.
This was announced this Monday by the national secretary of Organization of CC, David Toledo, in an appearance in Lanzarote in which he announced the presentation of motions in all Canarian institutions in order to “make the State comply and demand that the Government of the Canary Islands protect the interests of this land.”
The nationalist leader insisted that the last update, which was made in 2019, “is putting at risk the economic and productive fabric of the Islands and increasing the price of the shopping basket.” Thus, he assured that the impact on transport costs after the pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine, the increase in oil prices and the escalation of inflation is “brutal.” “Today the transport of goods is up to 600% more expensive than in 2019 in the case of islands such as Lanzarote, La Graciosa, Fuerteventura, La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro”, something he described as “unsustainable” and that endangers the viability of our industry and the primary sector.
Toledo showed the delicate situation of the livestock sector: “In 2019 it cost them to put a container of 22 tons of fodder in the Islands from Cádiz around 1,200 euros and that today they have to pay 4,000 euros for the same container”. The same “dramatic” situation is experienced, according to him, by companies that want to export Canarian products and that “today cannot compete on equal terms precisely because of the negligence of a Government of Spain that does not update the compensations and the subordination and neglect of a Government of the Canary Islands that does not defend the interests of this land.”
"We cannot stand idly by and we will defend initiatives in the 7 Island Councils and in the 88 municipalities that will join those defended by the nationalists in the Courts and in the Canarian Parliament,” Toledo insisted.
For her part, the island secretary of CC in Lanzarote, Migdalia Machín, has emphasized that "this is not a whim", but that "the future of many Canarian companies is at stake, especially those on peripheral islands like ours where we continue to suffer the consequences of double and triple insularity; consequences that directly affect the price of the shopping basket".
Machín has insisted that "that future depends on the updating of the standard costs that are guaranteed in a REF that the State systematically violates, with the approval of the Government of the Canary Islands."
"We not only ask, but we demand the revision of the standard costs for the transport of goods and we demand that the Government of the Canary Islands ensure this. It is not a whim, it is simply justice", adds Machín.
With the initiative, the Canarian nationalists seek to promote an “institutional front” that forces the Government of the Canary Islands to demand from the Government of Spain, on the one hand, “the modification and updating of the standard transport costs in the Canary Islands, to guarantee that the industrial and primary sectors can mainly perceive and guarantee what is established in the law and thus be able to compete on equal terms as in the "peninsular" territory, thus benefiting the Canarian citizens.”
"And, on the other hand, guarantee, in this way, strict compliance with article 7 of our Economic and Fiscal Regime (REF) of the Canary Islands, which allows compensating 100% of the effective and real cost of maritime and air transport of goods and determine the standard costs for each route with an annual frequency in a transparent manner and through a public hearing procedure, collecting the necessary information from the independent operators that operate on said routes”, they add from CC.
