The President of the Legislative Assembly of Madeira, Rubina Leal, met with Younous Omarjee, Vice-President of the European Parliament and head of the Committee on Regional Development (REGI) delegation.
Leal reaffirmed the need for the European Union to ensure effective protection for Madeira as an Outermost Region (OMR), emphasizing that its development should not lead to penalties. She argued that distance, insularity, market size, topography, and permanent additional costs remain regardless of GDP evolution.
She advocated for Article 349 of the Treaty to continue translating into concrete differentiation in European policies and funding. Leal warned that any European model solely based on development indicators for OMR support risks contradicting the very purpose of the outermost region status. Progress achieved should be recognized as a success of European integration, not used to weaken instruments addressing the region's permanent constraints.
