The Regional Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry stated in Tenerife that the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands are united in the defence of a POSEI programme that meets the challenges of agriculture in Outermost Regions.
 
"These three Outermost Regions defend that the existence of POSEI outside the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and a POSEI programme that allows us to respond to the challenges of agriculture," said João Ponte. The government official spoke on the sidelines of the meeting of Ministers of Agriculture from Portugal, Spain and France in which he participated as a member of the Portuguese delegation.
 
The agenda of this event, held during the day at the headquarters of the Presidency of the Government of the Canary Islands, includes a meeting to discuss the future of agriculture in the Outermost Regions of the European Union.
 
The Regional Secretary joined the Portuguese delegation at the invitation of the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Development, Luis Capoulas Santos. According to him, POSEI is "an extremely important programme" for Outermost Regions in terms of regional socio-economic development, reiterating that it deserves an increase in its financial allocation on the part of Community authorities.
 
"We have to continue working towards the reinforcement of budget allocations (from POSEI), seeing that production in these three outermost regions continues to grow," stressed João Ponte. In this context, he noted that increased costs of production, small-sized economies and territorial discontinuity "naturally justify this claim."
 
João Ponte pointed out that the POSEI budget has a "very low weight" in the overall budget of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), so the defence of an increase of POSEI funds "is not a utopia," but rather "a belief that it is possible."
 
The meeting also discusses the CAP strategy after 2020 and the creation of a cooperation group for European bananas.