The General Court of the European Union (CJEU), in a ruling issued this summer, has dealt a direct blow to the island’s financial aspirations by dismissing the appeal filed by the public company Ferrocarriles de Gran Canaria, SA. In a decision issued by the Second Chamber, Luxembourg upheld the legality of the resolution adopted by the European Union Agency for Climate, Infrastructure and the Environment (ENIAE), ratifying the exclusion of the Gran Canaria Train from the distribution of funds from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) in its 2023 call for proposals. Gran Canaria will have to wait for a future call for proposals and join the queue, given that the 2023 call already involves the renewal of the mechanisms of the failed call.
The disqualification was due to a formal admissibility requirement: the absence, within the deadline of January 30, 2024, of the letter of conformity and state guarantee issued by the Government of Spain. The application submitted by the island promoters included a notification from the Ministry dated December 2023, in which the central administration communicated its refusal to issue the signature on time.
The project managers submitted official state endorsement on March 12, 2024—a month and a half late—as part of an administrative review request to the Commission’s services. The European Court of Justice rejected this maneuver, arguing that the evaluation agency operated under the principle of regulated competition. Submitting essential documentation outside the submission period would have violated the principle of equal treatment compared to other European applicants who adhered to the official deadline.
The judges dismissed the island’s public entity’s claim of “force majeure.” The defense attempted to justify the delay in processing the documents by citing the complexities of the bureaucratic system, the distance from the ministries in Madrid, and the constraints of being an outermost region. In its reasoning, the court pointed out that the lack of inter-institutional coordination is a foreseeable factor in the preparation of files of this magnitude, manageable through due diligence.
The ruling invalidates the appeal and deems the court “manifestly incompetent” to hear the Canary Islands company’s secondary request, which sought to compel the EU agency to accept the project. As a final step in the proceedings, Luxembourg orders the island’s public company to pay court costs, thus closing off any ordinary legal avenue for challenging the grant allocation.
The report highlights the mismatch between the island administration’s timeline and the requirements of European funding bodies. Despite periodic appeals to the principles of territorial cohesion and flexibility, European Union institutions reaffirm a doctrine of strict formalism. Without timely state approval, the Gran Canaria Train project loses a crucial opportunity to secure EU funding, forcing local authorities to seek alternative financing for the project.