EU Presidency Statement - Review of GA Resolution 48/218B and 54/244 (OIOS)

Thank you Mr Chairman,

I have the honor to speak on behalf of the EU. 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.

We understand that there will be no introduction of the agenda item by any member of the Secretariat.

The EU finds itself in the unusual position of making a statement on an agenda item where there is no report and no introduction by a representative of the Secretary-General on which to base our comments. However, given the importance we attach to the work of the OIOS and the benefit to the UN of a strong internal oversight body, we offer some initial, and very general, thoughts on this item.

We recall that the inclusion of this item on our agenda is the result of resolution 54/244, which said that the GA should examine functions and reporting procedures of OIOS and any other matter which it deems appropriate at its 59th session. We understand that we shall be assisted in our consideration by the results of a self-assessment carried out by the Office which is included in the OIOS annual report to be considered shortly. We may therefore offer more considered views at a later stage.

The EU considers that the following will form three of the major themes to our discussions:

1) How to operationalise the independence of the OIOS - more specifically, to what extent the office should be granted greater independence in terms of the process for proposing its staff and financial requirements.

2) The timely availability and dissemination of OIOS reports. We believe that a measure of the success of the Office is the frequency with which it is now tasked by the General Assembly to conduct evaluations, and management reviews. We do not wish to see a proliferation of such reports coming to the GA for formal consideration - the OIOS is, after all, fundamentally an internal oversight body - but would prefer a mechanism whereby interested delegations can access a wider range of OIOS reports on their own initiative.

3) Implementation and follow-up of OIOS recommendations or findings: We understand that there currently exists a gap in the Secretariat in terms of a high-level mechanism for ensuring co-ordination and follow-up to oversight recommendations, particularly where the findings of the OIOS have not been agreed between the Office and the Department concerned.

The EU would be interested in exploring further the views of the different parts of the Secretariat on these issues when we have had a chance to study the relevant parts of the annual report and the comments of the Secretary-General thereon.

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• EU Presidency Statement - SG report on Office of Internal Oversight Services (23/10/2003)
• EU Presidency Statement - Office of Internal Oversight Services Report (23/10/2003)