EU Presidency Statement - Joint Inspection Unit

Mr. Chairman,

I have the honor to speak on behalf of the European Union. The Candidate Countries Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Croatia, the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, and the EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, members of the European Economic Area, align themselves with this declaration

The European Union would like to thank the Chairman of the Joint Inspection Unit, Mr. Ion Gorita, for introducing the reports under this item.

Mr. Chairman,

The first issue that I would like to address is JIU reform. The EU attaches great importance to inspection activities as a fundamental tool to enhance efficiency of the UN system and we believe that the Joint Inspection Unit, the only independent external oversight body with a system-wide mandate, has an important role to play in this regard.

But the JIU has not yet lived up to our expectations. That is why this Committee for years has raised critical points concerning the work of the JIU and that is why members of the CPC last year called for an in-depth review of the statute and working methods of the Unit. Whereas the inspectors carried out a review in the fall of 2003 and undertook on their own initiative some internal measures to improve the working methods of the Unit, they sought decisions by the UN General Assembly on much needed structural reforms.

Fundamentally, the reform needs to ensure that the work of the Unit is relevant to the participating organisations. To achieve this, we need to ensure that the right people are appointed to serve as inspectors in Geneva, that the work of the Unit is carried out in an optimal way, ensuring high quality output and maximum cost-effectiveness, and that there is the right interaction with participating organisations and other entities. The EU believes that this necessitates changes to the JIU statute.

The reform has been on the agenda of the Fifth Committee in previous sessions and time has come to take a decision. The issues have been clarified and debated, as have the positions of delegations, but no consensus has emerged. We are disappointed at the amount of resistance that the key elements of the reform have faced in this Committee. We are committed to ensuring the success of the JIU and that is why we will not let this opportunity for meaningful reform slip away.

We will during this session also discuss the issue of UN programme budget funding of the JIU for 2005. The reason for not appropriating the JIU 2005 funds in the context of the budget resolution last fall was to make sure that the momentum for reform was not lost. However, there has been no action on JIU reform by this Committee so far. The discussions in this Committee the coming months should be focused and lead to concrete results in the main session.

Mr. Chairman,

Moving on to the reports that are new to this session, the EU welcomes the report A/59/349 on the implementation of the approved recommendations of the Joint Inspection Unit.

The EU has also taken note of the report A/59/34, detailing the activities of the JIU in 2003. We welcome the improved format of the annual report and the planned merger of the annual report and the report on the programme of work of the Unit in the future. We also note with interest the statement in the Preface that a methodology for inclusion of baseline data in the reports of the Unit is being elaborated.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, the EU takes note of document A/59/75, transmitting the programme of work of the Joint Inspection Unit for 2004.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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