Reunion
Réunion exhibits French overseas integration: 870,000 EU citizens 700km from Madagascar, with metropolitan fiscal transfers maintaining living standards despite 17% unemployment.
Réunion is a French overseas department 700 kilometers east of Madagascar—as fully integrated into France as Normandy or Provence, with the same laws, currency, and social benefits. The island's 870,000 residents hold French citizenship and EU membership, receiving significant fiscal transfers that maintain living standards far above neighboring Madagascar and Mauritius. This creates an unusual economic structure: tourism and sugar cane production generate local revenue, but the real economy depends on metropolitan subsidy.
The island exhibits volcanic dynamism in both geology and demography. The Piton de la Fournaise erupts regularly, creating new land, while the population grew rapidly in the late 20th century before stabilizing. Unemployment remains persistently high by French standards (around 17%), yet the social safety net prevents the poverty visible across the Mozambique Channel. Réunion functions as France's Indian Ocean platform—strategic positioning that justified integration costs.
The biological analogy is symbiosis with the metropolitan host: Réunion cannot survive at current living standards without fiscal transfers, and France gains Indian Ocean presence, EEZ rights, and a population that votes in national elections. The arrangement resembles New Zealand's relationship with Niue or the US Compact with Palau—small island territories maintained through metropolitan subsidy for strategic and historical reasons. Whether this represents sustainable mutualism or dependency that delays local adaptation remains debated.