I dont know what you exactly mean when you are talking about poor regions in Spain because just 3 places now a days are supported by the EU (Galicia, Extremadura and Andalucia) and the poorest one region is Extremadura which is still rich, I mean, is the poorest yes, but not poor (in straight meaning). Greece, Portugal, Malta, Poland... are more poor for example, and yes, they 3 get some extra money (just for one more year by the way) to improve its development because their gip is under the EU media. So dont think that Madrid would grow less if these other 3 regions do not get money from EU because these Spanish places do not need as help as the others could not grow. Of course Europe has helped Spain, and spaniards know it but the country is having a great development by itself. Its economy grows up more than the EU economy and for example Euzkadi, La Rioja, Navarra, Balears, Catalunya, Madrid and Aragon are part of the 17 spanish regions and all of them have a bigger GIP than EU.
Spain according to the latest stats by Eurostat (2006), is at 97.4 (whereby 100 is the EU25 GDP per inhabitant average).
7 Spanish regions: Pais Vasco, Navarra, La Rioja, Aragon, Madrid, Cataluna and the Illes Balears are above the EU 25 PPS per inhabitant.
While 12 Spanish regions: Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Castilla y Leon, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, Valenciana, Andalucia, Murcia, Ceuta, Melilla, Canarias are below the EU 25 PPS per inhabitant.
Yet my point isn't about EU rankings of states....but the usage of EU funds. Granted the majority won't be used on these projects, but they have been and continue to be used elsewhere in Spain which provides an indirect investment by the EU. Simply put, its money that Madrid would have had to originally sourced to say Valenciana, but no longer has to because the EU gives the funding. This means that Madrid now has 'free' money that it can spent on projects to build new metro lines, etc..
My problem is that with Spain practically an average EU nation, that it ought to start giving way to the EU funding and become a bit more like say Germany or Britain, in other words become a net contributor.
The traveler said:
So what? What is your point? As far as I know those grants from EU are for helping new coming members reach higher income levels and to develop country's infrastructure. In fact, Spain is a very good example of this theory. By using EU grants Spanish Economy is one of the best performances in Western Europe and now would be a pivotal country in that area. What is wrong about those things? I don't see the all picture about this discussion of EU funding and Madrid infrastructure. On the other hand, we have many Western European countries which their performance is at least ridicule. That's maybe the problem.
Most economists would attribute the current Spanish economic growth to two factors:
- EU inward investment that massages the economy to create jobs and build infrastructure and sustain agricultural practices that are wasteful
- Immigration, what with Spain growing by 4mn over the last few years.
Yet despite those factors, the Spanish economy is growing at 3.7%, compare that to Britain at 2.8% which gets nothing like the inward EU investment or the large number of immigrants in relation to the current population that Spain gets. This is worrying because it highlights that Spain isn't innovating, its simply using the EU funds and external movements into the country to keep the economy going which is unsustainable in the long-term.
Fact is, now is the time that Poland, etc should be getting the EU's funds; instead we have Spain following the same path of France: protectionism to hold onto an antiquadated lifestyle and corporate structure that stiffles the EU, wastes money, damages the EU economy and causes us to loose out to the US and China.