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Ultra Peripheral Regions: Case study Canary Islands

The regional economics is concerned with the uneven economic development between world regions. they have developed many theories to describe and interpret such discrepencies, that are known under Core - Periphery relations. In the 1990's the EU recognized the existence of an aggravated form of uneven development that seem to characterize regions that were previously annexed to the formal territories of the First World. Unlike the traditional colonial experience through which countries with well defined territorial boundaries were ruled by a European country, those regions were considered as an administrative units of the main Core country's own territories. At first such countries, after independence, were given the same preferential treatment as other Third World countries, and ex-colonies; nevertheless, as impovrished and underdeveloped as those regions were, they were in competition with the previous ex-colonies, and their infant independent economy had to compete with those of other stronger nations. Indeed, the Canary Island not only competed with Morocco over their exports to the EU, but as tourism became the most important industry in this ultra peripheral region, it was also competing with the same country over the flow of tourists. Thus, as the economic conditions worsened in those regions, the EU was compelled to recognize that they represent a " special case" of underdevelopment and to design special programs to assist them to develop. Those programs seem to be yielding, in building an economic infra-structure that would lead to the diversification of the economy, which so far relies only on tourism, and to the integration of the ultra peripheral regions in the World economy.

References:

1-Carmen D.Wehbe Herrera,"The Ultra Periphereral Regions of the European Union: The Case of the Canary Island (online) 2-D.Seers et als, Underdeveloped Europe:Studies in Core-Periphery relations. 3-D. Slater, "Undedevelopment and spatial inequalities,"