If you are thinking of investing in a property in the Balearics, there is no need to worry just yet.
But, the Spanish government has proposed that the European Commission authorise it to limit the purchase of homes in the Canary Islands that are not for residential use in order to reduce pressure on the property market and facilitate access to housing for young people and vulnerable groups and this could be the first step in a national crackdown.
The proposal is part of a package of measures that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has suggested Brussels include in the future simplification of regulations for the EU’s outermost regions (ORs), nine territories in France, Portugal and Spain that are granted special treatment under the treaties, according to a statement on Wednesday by the Minister for Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres.
The Canary Islands Government had also approached the European Commission to request an exception for the ORs in terms of housing in order to contain price rises, although its request went in another direction: to prohibit or limit the purchase of homes in its territory by foreigners who are not residents of the islands.
The president of the autonomous community, Fernando Clavijo, travelled to Brussels to persuade the Commission to take action on the matter, with statistics showing that in the Canary Islands one in four homes for sale goes to foreign citizens. He also argued that the islands have a fragmented and limited territory, where tensions in the property market have a greater impact on the resident population.
The Spanish government had not yet responded to Clavijo’s request, beyond acknowledging that it would study it, but it has now submitted its own suggestion to the EU for all the outermost regions, including the Canary Islands. ‘We propose that the acquisition of housing in the outermost regions for non-residential use be limited by legislative mechanisms, so that prices can be lowered and young people and other groups in difficulty can access it,’ Minister Torres explained in a statement released by his department.
Spain’s contribution to the debate on the future of the OR regulations extends to other areas of particular interest to the Canary Islands: the primary sector, immigration and state aid. In the case of the primary sector, it is making a specific request for the Programme of Options Specifically Relating to Remoteness and Insularity (POSEI), considering it ‘of vital importance for the primary sector’ of the Canary Islands.
Its approach, shared by the Ministries of Agriculture and Finance, ‘highlights the strategic value of the primary sector in the ORs, especially in the Canary Islands, requesting, in turn, that the uniqueness of POSEI be maintained with a sufficient budget and also calling for administrative and bureaucratic streamlining’.
The Ministry of Territorial Policy, which has coordinated the work to draft the text sent by Spain to Brussels, specifies that measures are also requested for the sustainability of the primary sector, ‘such as the establishment of rules to enable the urgent renewal of the small fleet in the ORs and the amendment of the EU Regulation to allow “de minimis” aid for reforms and improvements in safety and sustainability in fishing vessels of less than 12 metres’.
With regard to migration, Spain is calling for ‘the redistribution of minors and the transfer of migrants from the ORs to mainland Europe to be facilitated, avoiding their concentration in these regions and ensuring an adequate legal framework’. In 2025, the Canary Islands alone took in almost 6,000 African minors who arrived in small boats and canoes, who are now beginning to be distributed among the rest of the Spanish communities under the recent reform of the Immigration Law.
Spain also wants the Canary Islands and the other ORs to be allowed ‘a more flexible regime for the approval of state aid, without restrictions on amounts, sectors or time limits, provided that the internal cohesion of the Union is not affected’. Finally, it encourages Brussels to turn the outermost regions into a testing ground ‘to try out legislative innovations in a controlled environment, simplifying rules and reducing burdens before applying them to the Union as a whole’.