Despite the notable influence that decisions made in the European Union have on our lives, or the growing role of community institutions in the elaboration of laws, and even their unfortunate role in the application of an adjustment policy that is devastating for our country, citizens continue to perceive the EU as a distant and unknown network of institutions that do not spark their interest. Hence, there is enormous concern about whether abstention will end up prevailing over participation in the polls in the elections to be held on May 25th.
It is inevitable to recognize that Europe is suffering a multiple crisis. And it is not just an economic crisis, but especially an institutional one. A Europe that, despite the undeniable role it has played in our development, has chosen to manage the crisis in the most unfortunate way: adjustment and savings, causing a dismantling of public services and employment, while authorizing millionaire economic injections to save financial institutions from bankruptcy. And this misguided strategy has caused a greater distancing of citizens from institutions that they perceive as distant and not very transparent.
However, this is the most important electoral call in the European Union. Not only because it will be the Parliament that appoints the president and members of the future Commission, but because citizens can decide whether we want to continue betting on those political forces that champion more budget cuts, as is the case of the Popular Party, or those of us who believe that Europe should rectify and apply a policy of incentives to the economy similar to that carried out by the United States, among other countries.
However, despite the fact that the EU has lost 24 points of prestige since the crisis began, we cannot ignore that its good practices allowed at the time the construction of a more cohesive continent, with a level of well-being far superior to the rest of the planet (the EU concentrates 50% of the world's social spending, despite having only 7% of the population) and with an unquestionable advance in terms of fundamental rights and individual freedoms. And that model, which cracked with the irruption of the crisis, is what we aspire to recover in the new stage that will open after the May elections.
We, Coalición Canaria, are running in these elections with a team made up of seven young people from the seven islands, led by Javier Morales from El Hierro, whose trajectory guarantees him as one of the best specialists in the Archipelago in renewable energies and in all those matters related to innovation in the primary sector.
We come to this important electoral appointment with a specific program for the Canary Islands. Ours is not an annex or a separate issue. It is a program elaborated after an extensive internal debate and open to citizens in which specialist technicians in community affairs, militants, sympathizers and those people who have raised their proposals through the channels opened by CC in social networks have participated.
These elections represent a unique opportunity to promote, through our own representation, a work agenda within the European Parliament that includes those proposals that we raise for the Canary Islands. An agenda for the EU to develop the opportunities of the Canary Islands through the improvement of our air and maritime connectivity, the promotion of the internationalization of our economy, the use of biodiversity for the creation of technology-based industries, the development of data networks, the strengthening of research in astrophysics, renewable energies or research in the marine-maritime field.
We demand that the special fit of the Canary Islands in the EU be consolidated, seeking mechanisms that guarantee the adaptation of European policies to our specificities as an OR, in addition to guaranteeing an Economic and Fiscal Regime that allows us to enjoy similar conditions to the rest of the citizens of Europe, as well as improve the competitiveness and diversity of the Canarian economy.
We will transfer to Europe our massive rejection of oil and a firm commitment to a change in the energy model, favoring the progressive implementation of renewable energies, which are cleaner, cheaper and inexhaustible, to the detriment of fossil fuels, which will allow us both to diversify the economy and favor the creation of employment, as well as drastically reduce external dependence. And, as Javier Morales says, let the fossils rest in peace.
In short, in the new stage that will open within the EU from May 25, we want the Canary Islands to have their own voice that guarantees the prominence that corresponds to us as a territory with its own status and that, in these times of change, can play a key geostrategic role in the new commercial relations between the EU and the African continent.
Ana Oramas, deputy of Coalición Canaria
