Celia Alberto Pérez, Director General for European Affairs of the Government of the Canary Islands, has been appointed today as shadow rapporteur for the forthcoming revised European strategy for the outermost regions, during the meeting of the European Committee of the Regions’ COTER Commission.
Welcoming the appointment, Alberto Pérez expressed gratitude for the trust placed in her and highlighted the importance of ensuring that the specific realities of these regions are fully reflected in EU policymaking. “The outermost regions represent a specific and unique reality within the EU, characterized by a series of exceptional and particularly intense structural and cumulative challenges, with a high dependence on the outside. This reality, recognized in Article 349 of the TFEU, makes our regions extremely vulnerable. At the same time, our unique situation provides us with distinctive potential and advantages; we are European regions located in non-European geographical contexts, forming the most distant external borders of the EU. It is essential that the European strategy for our regions continues to evolve and adapt to today’s highly changing and uncertain circumstances, so that our regions are not left behind and their potential can continue to be unlocked for the benefit of the entire EU. This is a matter of social justice and territorial cohesion.”
The revised strategy will aim to better address the evolving challenges faced by these regions, including economic dependency, geographic remoteness, and vulnerability to external shocks, while unlocking their strategic potential as key assets for the European Union.
Background
The EU’s outermost regions (ORs), recognised under Article 349 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), are territories located far from the European mainland and facing permanent structural constraints. These include: the Canary Islands (Spain), the Azores and Madeira (Portugal), and the French outermost regions of Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte, and Réunion.