The Canary Islands president, Fernando Clavijo, believes that an issue as important as legislating to facilitate access to housing "is not resolved in 48 hours, but with broad agreements from all political forces," for which he has advocated addressing it with "a bit of common sense and calm."
This is what he stated at the beginning of the two-day visit he is making to Ireland, a country that presides over the European Union during the second half of the year and from which he intends to seek its support on key issues for the Canary Islands autonomous community, such as limiting the purchase of housing by non-residents and ensuring that the RUP resources are "ring-fenced" in the new European financing framework.
When asked about the decrees approved this Tuesday by the Council of Ministers with the housing measures agreed upon by PSOE and Sumar, Clavijo said that on Monday they sent CC a draft that he does not know if it is the final one, a text on which the Canary nationalists made proposals, according to statements made by the Canary Islands president and disseminated by his press office.
One of them is the need to distinguish between small, medium, and large property owners, and another, that administrative silence be positive when six months pass and a town hall does not grant a license to build housing, so that "the full weight of responsibility is not placed on the owners, but that public administrations can also intervene."
In his opinion, "such an important issue cannot be resolved with a decree-law in 48 hours."
He stressed that "the Spanish Government has been at it for eight years, it is an issue that requires broad agreements, not last-minute agreements for which we don't even know the final text," and therefore he insisted that he does not believe "it is the most correct method."
Nevertheless, he expressed confidence that "it can be redirected and that the housing issue can reach a broad agreement among all political forces with a bit of common sense and calm, because in the end, these types of improvised last-minute legislations generate more problems than solutions."
The Canary Islands president considered that "this is more a matter of poses, of narrative, than of solving a problem. I don't think the Government will break up, these are feints to try to position themselves electorally, and I think it is irresponsible to do so with an issue like housing, which is a problem in Europe, in Spain, and in the Canary Islands."
Clavijo has recalled that "he has been trying for some time to limit the purchase of housing by non-residents, by foreigners, in the Canary Islands".
Likewise, he has emphasized that "there must be housing first for the Canaries" and that, precisely, coinciding with Ireland's Presidency of the European Council, he has traveled to this country to establish with the Secretary of State a common strategy on housing for being islands of the EU, he has referred.
The Outermost Regions (ORs) in the face of the new EU budget
He also referred to the time that the Canary Islands have been demanding that the position of the Government of Spain in the negotiation of the new multiannual European financial framework "safeguard the resources for the ORs".
"We have not managed to be given information. The strategy of the ORs includes all our requests, among others, the need for the European project not to abandon border territories, such as the Canary Islands, in migratory matters, but if this is not accompanied by a financial package, it will be difficult to turn it into a reality," he has pointed out.
Likewise, he has stated that good words are not enough "if we do not have guaranteed funds for our POSEI, the CAP or if cohesion funds do not arrive" and has insisted on the "information blackout by the Government of Spain".
And for this reason, Clavijo has explained that his decision to "move to the heart of the Council is to convey the requests" of the Canary Islands "through the Government of Ireland and, above all, to lobby".
"I have always said that while there is a game, you have to play it and what we are doing is defending the rights of the Canaries," he has stressed.
The next meeting, he has detailed, will be in Guadeloupe in November, and in December the commissioner for regions Fitto will travel to the Canary Islands, before the approval of that multiannual framework, "and we must be very attentive because everything is changing, everything is going very fast and any oversight can mortgage our future for the next seven years" in the islands.
Clavijo has made "a call to the Government of Spain to count on the Canary Islands in this negotiation, since the islands are the only OR that the country has". "We hope that Moncloa and its president can support this strategy," he has added.
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