The situation we are experiencing is so exceptional that we need a large amount of extraordinary resources to face with guarantees the economic reactivation and the social protection of the most vulnerable while we fight the pandemic and wait for a vaccine. So we cannot settle for the austerity proposals coming from some countries of the European Union. We cannot and should not resign ourselves because austerity is not the recipe to overcome this enormous crisis.
The president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote requested a few weeks ago an Eastern Annex in the Pact for the Social and Economic Reactivation of the Canary Islands. I agree with María Dolores Corujo that it is a fair, reasonable and appropriate claim because a very important part of the current expenditure of the Cabildo is used to attend to the competences of the Government of the Canary Islands that have been transferred or delegated without the appropriate economic endowment. In the case of Lanzarote, the amount that the Canarian Government receives to attend to these transferred or delegated competences has remained unchanged since 2005, and Fuerteventura is in a similar situation.
However, the Government of the Canary Islands also demands more resources from the State. The Pact for the Social and Economic Reactivation of the Canary Islands that was signed with a very broad institutional, political and representative business and trade union organizations, has estimated at more than 18,000 million euros the amount needed to address the crisis in the Archipelago only for the year 2020. Inevitably, Ángel Víctor Torres directs his gaze towards the Government of Spain asking for economic support, but President Pedro Sánchez is doing the same with the European Union (EU), as we have seen this last weekend, so that agreements are reached and the resources that have been committed are quickly transferred.
In the end, many of us place our hopes not so much on the EU, which is behaving somewhat timidly when it comes to combating the consequences of this crisis, but on the German presidency semester of the Council of the Union, which will last until the end of the year. The priorities of the German presidency leave no room for doubt, since its motto is 'Together for the recovery of Europe'. From Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has given ample evidence of her leadership capacity in pursuit of a more cohesive Europe, we can safely expect that she will focus on overcoming the pandemic and on unreservedly supporting the recovery of the economy.
We are living in decisive moments and hopefully the recovery fund endowed with 750,000 million euros will be released very soon to reactivate the economy and coordinate health efforts against the coronavirus. If it is done promptly, the countries most affected by covid-19 will be able to overcome the long-term consequences of this crisis and focus on economic and social recovery, but at the same time we will be lending a hand for a stronger and more innovative Europe, more just, more sustainable, more secure and of common values, and for a strong Europe in the world.
Fco. Manuel Fajardo Palarea, senator of the PSOE for Lanzarote and La Graciosa.
