EU prepares new strategy for its nine outermost regions

French Guiana gives EU its only land border with South America

The European Commission is developing a new strategy for the EU’s nine outermost regions — territories that remain legally part of the bloc despite being located thousands of miles from continental Europe.

European Commission Executive Vice President Raffaele Fitto convened leaders of those regions in Brussels last November and described the strategy under preparation as a “true turning point.” He told the gathering that the regions function as Europe’s “ambassadors in the world” at a time of intensifying global competition, according to UPI.

French Guiana sits on the South American mainland and shares land borders with Brazil and Suriname. Because French Guiana is part of France, it is also part of the European Union and the bloc’s single market — a status that gives the EU a physical land border with South America.

In a UPI opinion piece published Friday, Paraguayan economist Federico Sosa wrote that Brussels has so far used that geographic position lightly. French Guiana “occupies something no policy initiative can manufacture: a permanent European position on the South American mainland,” Sosa wrote.

The Guiana Space Centre already demonstrates what an embedded European presence can look like. According to Sosa, sophisticated European technology already operates from South American soil there.

Outside the launch sector, Sosa wrote, French Guiana has been treated primarily as a remote European region requiring special support to compensate for its small population, high costs and geographic isolation. “Those disadvantages are real,” he wrote. “No one should imagine that French Guiana will suddenly become a major commercial hub. But scale is not the point. Strategic function is.”

Sosa called for connecting the European presence more deliberately with surrounding economies. He identified Brazil as the largest economy in South America and a central member of Mercosur, and pointed to Suriname and Guyana as countries immediately adjacent to French Guiana’s economic neighborhood. Guyana, he wrote, is rapidly developing as an energy producer and is already reshaping the economic landscape of the Guianas.

The EU’s outermost regions also include Guadeloupe, Martinique and Saint-Martin in the Caribbean, the Canary Islands off West Africa, and Réunion and Mayotte in the Indian Ocean. Sosa wrote that each region’s value lies in belonging to both a European identity and a geographic neighborhood — and that EU policy should reflect that dual position.

The bloc already runs a funding program for cross-border cooperation, one component of which is designed for outermost regions to work with non-EU neighbors. Separately, the EU allocates close to 2 billion euros for 2021–2027 to offset the costs of remoteness in those regions.

Sosa framed the choice facing Brussels as whether to treat such cooperation as regional development policy or as part of Europe’s external economic strategy. “Europe is seeking more resilient supply chains, diversified partnerships and stronger economic relationships beyond its immediate neighborhood,” he wrote. “Latin American countries, meanwhile, are looking for investment that produces infrastructure, technological capacity, employment and greater local value.”

He also pointed to competitor activity in the region. “China has spent years expanding its economic presence across Latin America through trade, lending, infrastructure and investment,” Sosa wrote. “The United States remains deeply engaged throughout the hemisphere.”

Sosa identified himself as a member of the executive committee of Instituto Patria Soñada, a Paraguayan think tank. The views expressed in the piece are solely his own, UPI said.