The SSPA (Network of Southern Sparsely Populated Areas), promoted by the Confederation of Employers of Teruel (CEOE Teruel), the Federation of Sorian Business Organizations (FOES) and the Confederation of Businessmen of Cuenca (CEOE-CEPYME Cuenca) fight against depopulation in their respective territories, it welcomed the approval by the European Parliament of the report “Deployment of the instruments of cohesion policy by the regions to tackle demographic change”, coordinated by MEP Iratxe García.
In the opinion of the representatives for this organization, the approval of this document is important because it assumes that this issue is on the first page of the European agenda, but also for the analysis of the situation it is doing. In fact, the measures that it considers in its pages deal with the problem of depopulation and, especially, the creation of an adequate legal framework for the depopulated areas that define the territories in which it is necessary to act as a priority using a much more precise scale based on provinces in place of in autonomous communities. In the same way, SSPA considers that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is not the only scale to define the distribution of funds, and that others such as the dispersion of population or the existence of rural areas are taken into account. It will undoubtedly design and implement much more effective strategies in Europe, where 80% of the population is concentrated in 20% of the territory with the consequences that this entails.
SSPA also shares with this report the need for greater coordination of the structural funds so that they can be distributed in a more flexible way and can be used together, in an integrated manner for the same objective: to achieve the development of the rural environment. This is where its leaders want to continue working so that these funds arrive where they have to arrive and allow a development model with the capacity to reverse the depopulation suffered by our provinces.
The effective distribution of these amounts and the conviction that what is done must be done now and with an eye on the rural environment, which is where the towns and their inhabitants are, is something that the aforementioned business organizations have been for many years vindicating and, more recently, SSPA that brings them together.
On the other hand, SSPA asks the Government of Spain, which is part of the Commission and the European Council (following instances where the report is to pass) to take into consideration this document of the European Parliament supported mainly by its MEPs, who have very clearly showed its support to the regions of the European Union with an aging population, low birth rate and scarce labor supply: just what is targeting young people from these three provinces and from other areas of Europe that the report identifies to abandon the rural environment, leading to these territories to the absolute abandonment and isolation.