SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Nov. 3 (EUROPE PRESS) –
The president of the Parliament of the Canary Islands and vice-president of the Conference of Regional Legislative Assemblies of the EU (CALRE), Gustavo Matos, stated this Thursday that the European Union “must place the demographic challenge at the forefront of discussion”, in a debate centered on “How many” do they want to be in the archipelago “and under what economic model”.
Matos spoke at the meeting of the Cohesion Policy Working Group, held at the headquarters of the Veneto Regional Council with a work plan focused on analyzing the role of cohesion policy in the face of the demographic challenge in the regions of the Union.
“We must face that there is a problem of population distribution, due to the existence of overpopulated and unpopulated areas, phenomena that generate great difficulties,” he said, highlighting the “many edges and perspectives” of the demographic debate, “each one with its consequences in all policies, in the environment in the provision of services”.
As he recalled, the Canary Islands present “both sides of the coin” because in some areas of the islands there are the highest densities in Europe while others are uninhabited or in the process of depopulation.
“We have to assume that the population is poorly distributed, that there is a distribution problem. This is happening at a time when there have never been more people living on the planet,” he stated in a note sent by the Chamber.
Matos indicated that in Europe, the population pyramid “has changed shape as a result of a change in reality, something that is generating difficulties in the use of the planet’s resources, economic problems and massive migratory movements.”
Regarding this last phenomenon, he pointed out that the human being “has moved historically, has modified any territory demographically throughout history, so these movements should not surprise us.”
He insisted that the question must be “how many” human beings “are sustainable with respect to the pressure on the territory, public services, the economic model and, from there, make decisions, because growth cannot be unlimited and we must think about how to distribute the population.
The president explained that a study commission on the demographic challenge has been set up in the Parliament of the Canary Islands, with the participation of experts and all the groups in the Chamber, whose conclusions will be transferred to the European parliaments through CALRE. “It will be a very useful document beyond the Canary Islands,” he assured.
