Ignored island paradises fume at Brussels

EU outpost islands have sounded the alarm over policies decided in Brussels that “take too little consideration of their interests and economic problems,” leads the EUobserver.com. On the occasion of the "Forum for Outermost Europe" held in Brussels on 27 May, leaders of the union’s remotest regions presented a grim tableau of “dwindling revenues from tourism, unemployment rates above 25 percent and difficulties competing with Latin-American, Asian and Pacific producers”. Part of the internal market, the eurozone and also returning MEPs to the Brussels, the union’s nine outermost regions are situated in the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and Atlantic. EU free-trade agreements, the delegates complained, particularly threaten small-scale agriculture in a time of global economic crisis. “We suffer from poverty too. It is not easier in the sunshine than it is in the snow," Frantz Gumbs, president of territorial council of Saint Martin told the audience.