The Regional Secretary of the Presidency attended the Ministerial meeting on the Outermost Regions and Signature of the Joint Memorandum of Member States and Outermost Regions that was held in Las Palmas on Friday and stated that the signed document “represents a milestone in the promotion of our Regions in the European Union stresses that it will be “a reference to be taken into account by European institutions in the implementation and development of a renewed strategy for the ORs.”
André Bradford considered that the document signed at the meeting “reiterates the content of the Memorandum signed between the Presidents of the ORs last October,” which has “reinforced its main guidelines at a political and institutional level due to the involvement and commitment of Member States.” According to the Regional Secretary, the document “has the possibility to encompass and unite different realities of Outermost Regions which, despite their specificities, does not weaken their action in the European Union.”
The Regional Secretary of the Presidency considers that despite the “process of debate on the future of the partnership between the EU and the Outermost Regions, which started in 2007, has strengthened its legal basis with the entry in force of the Lisbon Treaty.” The signed memorandum “represents a solid commitment between the ORs and their Member States, which will lead to the improvement and coherence EU policies towards these regions.”
“While reflecting on a joint position regarding the main issues under analysis at the European medium term debate - as it happens with the new strategy 'EU 2020’ - the debate on the financial perspectives, the future of regional policy or the revision of several common policies, such as fisheries and agriculture, among other matters is also very important, André Bradford said, adding that the document signed at this meeting “reinforces some of our concerns, which are essential for the future status of “outermostness.”
Based on these concerns, André Bradford stressed “the continuous development of a new paradigm of ORs, which addresses not only the unique combination and structural constraints that define us, but also the enormous potential and the contribution that our regions bring to Europe.”
The Regional Secretary reminded “the difficulties and the need to compensate and differentiate policies in view of the distance, isolation, insularity, territorial dispersion, climate, geography, and the respective economic and social consequences,” defending the necessity “to achieve balance with the promotion of the competitive advantages of the ORs as a driving force for their development as well as for their economic, social and territorial cohesion.” Moreover, the Secretary considered that “we all have an obligation to defend the Outermost Regions in the context of a just and united Europe.”
According to André Bradford, “it is essential that the citizens of the have equal opportunities to exercise and enjoy their fundamental rights and freedoms as established in the Treaty, which embodies the European project, such as the circulation in the common space as well as the access to goods and services, knowledge, sustainable economic development and social welfare on an equal basis”; the Regional Secretary explained that this reference does not arise because “we feel second-class European citizens,” but because “we all have the right to be first-class European citizens.”
Before the representatives of the States and Outermost regions, and the new European Commissioner for Regional Policy, Johann Hahn, André Bradford, explained that “it makes no sense that the European Commission praises, on the one hand, the ORs for their immense biodiversity, the preservation of their environmental assets (20% of the habitats identified in the European Union are located in the Azores) and for the use of renewable energies  (the contribution of renewable energies in power generation in the Azores is expected to reach 50% in 2013 and 75% in 2018); and, on the other hand, the European Commission does not take into account these aspects when discussing measures to combat climate change with impact on a vital sector to their development, such as accessibility and the integration of air transport in the  CO2 licensing scheme.”
But the warnings of the Regional Secretary of the Presidency, addressed at the European Commission, have reached further when he considered this EU entity “cannot praise the policy of sustainable use of marine resources of the Azores and recognise the fragility of their stocks, and still authorise industrial fleets to fish on their waters or resist decentralisation in the management of the Common Fisheries Policy.” The government official added that “it does not seem appropriate that the Commission praises agricultural and traditional productions of the ORs, claiming them as key sectors to the sustainability of our small economies; however, with regard to the case of the Azores, the European Commission has been unable to provide adequate measures for maintaining the competitiveness of the productive sector of the ORs, the income of their producers and diversification of their production in view of the end of the milk quota system.”
For Andrew Bradford, a coherent context of EU action in favour of the ORs requires “a global vision,” considering that this “should lead to policies that at least do not exacerbate the access deficit and restrain the advantages of our integration in the European common market.” Therefore, “the political measures to be implemented by the European Union should always be preceded by prior consideration of its consequences in our territory and include a process of effective consultation of regional authorities, which in addition to being closest to the people, are better acquainted with the reality and know what is the best path for their future.”
 
  
The Regional Secretary, mentioning the motto of the Azores as the European Region of the Year 2010, “Where Europe goes further,” pointed out this choice not only for “obvious geographic feature in the Azores, but also for “profound symbolic significance” that stresses this fact: “the European Azores are the intersection of Geography with History, an outpost by vocation and Atlantic bridge by choice, a blend of Portuguese, Flemish, Bretons and Saxons; the homeland of the settlers of southern Brazil and Hawaii as well as of the emigrants that have formed a community of over one million people living in North America.”
Given natural and environmental characteristics, the Azores “are a projection vehicle of the transatlantic interests of Europe, by reason of their geographic, cultural, historical and emotional connection with the other side of the Atlantic,” which “is also one of the reasons why we consider a factor of assertion and integration of Europe in the world. Therefore, we still believe that if the Great Neighbourhood Policy is limited to kilometric proximity criteria, it will neither meet its goals nor achieve the potentialities of our territories,” concluded André Bradford.