Regions of opportunity

For many years, the EU has been increasing its focus on its outermost regions – Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, French Guiana, the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands – whose geographical and economic situation sets them apart from continental European regions.

They are far removed from the rest of Europe, often insular in nature and economically dependent on just a small number of goods or services – all factors which weigh heavily on efforts to improve the economic and social development of these regions. That is why the European treaty grants the outermost regions (ORs) a special status, which allows them to adapt EU law to their specific requirements.

A number of measures have been introduced to support the ORs, especially within EU cohesion policy (for example, a €975m additional payment through the Feder fund to compensate for higher costs), through regional state aid (the level of money available for investment aid is higher than is permitted elsewhere in the EU, while aid for ORs is not subject to the same limits as other European regions), through the fisheries fund (the increased cost of transporting fisheries products from the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, French Guiana and Réunion are compensated) or indeed through EU research policies (the ORs are granted special status within the FP7 research programme).

On 17 October, the European commission adopted a new communication on ‘The outermost regions – an asset for Europe’, in which it seeks to go a stage further and effect a real change in European strategy towards these regions. The idea is to move from a perception of them as problem regions to viewing them as regions of opportunity, with significant growth potential for themselves and for the whole of the EU – a concept supported by the MEPs from the regions concerned.

The ORs have much to offer: their geographical position at the heart of three different oceans and their well-preserved biodiversity and marine ecosystems make them ideal places for research into the effects of climate change, while their high-quality agricultural produce gives them an advantage when it comes to increasing European knowledge about food and farming.

Their location also makes them ideally placed to play a greater role in the EU’s foreign policy and in improving relationships with its wider neighbourhood.

I want to see the ORs increase their specialisation in other key policy areas by better targeting the €7.8bn available for 2007-2013 via the Feder, FSE, Feader, Fep and Posei programmes.

Furthermore, I want to help these regions seize the opportunities offered to them by other EU programmes, in particular the framework programme on research and development, the lifelong learning programme and the competitiveness and innovation programme.

We are also proposing a series of additional measures which are designed to tackle a number of issues. For example, we want to be able to better assess the impact of climate change, demographic changes and migration on the economic, social and geographical development of the ORs through a series of specific impact assessments, as well as improving the sustainable use of the maritime and agricultural resources of the ORs through the creation of a voluntary nature protection scheme along the lines of the Natura 2000 model, through a targeted programme designed to combat invasive species and through an integrated policy for coastal areas that will tackle issues such as erosion and flooding.

We also want to improve the integration of these regions within their local environments (for example through developing short sea crossings with third country neighbours) and help young people interested in entering the agricultural sector by offering start-up financing and investment opportunities.

Finally, we want to strengthen the relationship between the EU, the ORs and their respective member states through better communication concerning EU policies, through more collaboration between the various OR working groups within the commission and through a new Outermost Europe forum event to run every two years.

Agriculture, fisheries and tourism are the main sources of employment for the four million or so people who live in these seven outermost regions, but various EU-supported projects already up and running there show that there is significant capacity for them to specialise in areas of vital importance to the wider EU.

For example, there are several innovative projects focusing on renewable energy (in Madeira), on agriculture (Martinique), oceanography (the Azores), astrophysics (the Canaries) or satellite imagery (French Guiana). It is this know-how, which is all slightly ignored outside the ORs themselves, that I want to support and move forward so that these regions can put in place a new strategy for the period after 2013 that will allow them to play a new role at the heart of the EU.

In short, the ORs are regions whose unique assets are there to be exploited for the benefit of the whole of Europe.