What Changed
The European Commission has announced a new Strategy for the European Union's outermost regions, structured around four clear objectives.
- Geostrategic potential and regional integration.
- Competitiveness and better access to the Single Market.
- Resilience and preparedness.
- Social fairness.
Highlights
- The Strategy covers nine outermost regions, home to more than 5 million people.
- These territories sit in South America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, thousands of kilometres from continental Europe.
- Their maritime zones account for more than half of the EU's exclusive economic zones.
- The Commission built the Strategy together with the outermost regions and the Member States concerned.
Who Is Affected
Nine outermost regions fall under the Strategy, together home to more than 5 million people. If you follow markets tied to these territories, note that they lie in South America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, thousands of kilometres from continental Europe. The Azores and Madeira belong to Portugal, the Canary Islands belong to Spain, and French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte, La Réunion and Saint-Martin belong to France. Kourou, in French Guiana, serves as Europe's main gateway to space, and the outermost regions' maritime zones together make up more than half of the EU's exclusive economic zones.
What Changes In Practice
The Strategy is paired with a regulatory package offering targeted adaptations, exemptions and derogations on taxation, deforestation rules, agriculture, fisheries, and migration and asylum, drawing on Treaty Article 349, which allows the European Union to adapt its rules to the specific realities and constraints of these regions. The Commission built both the Strategy and the regulatory package together with the outermost regions and the Member States concerned, after listening through a public consultation and bringing together representatives of the regions, Member States and stakeholders at an event in Brussels.