EU Presidency Statement - The role of the UN

Mr Chairman,

I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union. The Central and Eastern European Countries associated with the European Union; Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,

Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Associated Countries Cyprus and Malta, as well as the EFTA members of the EEA Iceland and Norway align themselves with this statement.

First of all, I would like to congratulate you upon your election as chairman of this year's session of the Charter Committee. I would also like to extend our congratulations to the other members of the Bureau. We are convinced that under your able guidance we will make progress in our work.

Mr Chairman,

The General Assembly resolution 55/156 has entrusted the Charter Committee with two priority issues: implementation of the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations related to assistance to third States affected by the application of sanctions, and ways and means to improve the working methods of the Committee and to enhance its efficiency.

In recent years the Charter Committee has initiated a process of reflection on ways to improve the efficiency of its working methods. Some steps have been taken, such as scheduling the meeting later in the first half of the year. We also note that the Committee in last year's session made better use of the allocated conference services than in previous years.

But more can be done in order to improve the working methods. The European Union strongly believes that the work of the Charter Committee should be streamlined and more focused, concentrating on a few selected subjects each session. It is also essential to avoid unnecessary duplication and repetition of work that is carried out by other United Nations bodies specifically tasked with similar subjects. Issues related to general aspects of sanctions and in particular UN reform and peacekeeping are cases in point.

Proposals should be submitted as early as possible in order to give delegations sufficient time to study them before the sessions. As we proposed two years ago, we also believe that the report of the Charter Committee's session should adopted in a less time-consuming manner, following the example of the Ad Hoc Committee on Terrorism.

One way to improve the efficiency of our work could be the introduction of a cut-off mechanism in order to prevent the continued discussion of topics for many years without any concrete results. Such a mechanism could be designed to remove a topic from the agenda of the Committee after a certain number of years when there has been little consensus and little progress on the subject.

Another way would be to consider certain topics, which have been on the agenda for several years and where little progress has been made, only every two or three years. It would also be helpful if proposals for new topics were subject to a preliminary exchange of views within the Committee before being inscribed on the agenda. Given that there are already so many issues on the agenda of the Charter Committee, we would caution against inscribing new subjects for the time being.

The European Union believes that improvements of our working methods are necessary in order to enhance the efficiency and credibility of the Committee. Several interesting proposals on improving the working methods have been presented in previous sessions, in particular by Japan. We were pleased to note that many of the elements in the Japanese working paper received wide support last year and we hope that the Committee could reach consensus on the revised version this year.

Mr Chairman,

The other issue that last year's General Assembly resolution entrusted to the Charter Committee for consideration, on a priority basis, is the question of implementation of the provisions of the Charter related to assistance to third States affected by the application of sanctions.

The European Union believes that every effort should be made to minimise any negative impact on third States from measures adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter.

One important step taken by the Secretary-General in order to address these matters was the convening of the Ad Hoc Expert Group in June 1998. Its deliberations on developing a methodology for assessing the consequences incurred by third States resulted in a set of recommendations and proposals for innovative and practical measures of international assistance to the affected third States. The recommendations and proposals of the expert group constitute a useful basis for the consideration of measures aimed at minimising the negative impact of sanctions on vulnerable groups in the target State and on the economies of third States.

Many of the recommendations concern the Secretariat, which among other things would be entrusted with the preparation of an advance assessment of the potential impact of sanctions. As stated in previous sessions, the European Union looks forward to the views of the Secretary-General on the detailed suggestions of the experts, in particular on their political, financial and administrative feasibility, taking into account i.a. the forthcoming report of the working group of the Security Council. The European Union believes that it would be difficult for the Committee to have a substantial discussion on the recommendations until we have heard the Secretary-General's views.

We also note the important current work of the Security Council in addressing issues related to sanctions. In the Note of the President of the Security Council of 29 January 1999 (S/1999/92), the existing Sanctions Committees were reminded to request the Secretariat to provide, whenever necessary, assessments on the impact of sanctions. The European Union welcomes the continuing efforts of the Security Council to improve the functioning of the Sanctions Committees, to streamline their working procedures and to facilitate access to them by third States affected by sanctions.

The note by the President of the Security Council of 17 April 2000 established a working group

to develop general recommendations on how to improve the effectiveness of UN sanctions. We welcome the work done by the working group under the chairmanship of Ambassador Chowdhury and look forward to the findings of the working group and hope that the Security Council will continue its efforts to further enhance the effectiveness and transparency of the sanctions committees and to streamline their working procedures. The European Union is also pleased to note the role of ECOSOC in monitoring economic assistance to third States especially affected by economic problems related to sanctions.

There have been a number of important initiatives outside the UN framework to develop targeted sanctions as a tool of the UN Security Council. The UK Department for International Development sponsored a pioneering seminar on smarter sanctions in London in December 1998. In 1998 - 1999 the Swiss Government sponsored two in-depth seminars at Interlaken on improving the effectiveness of financial sanctions. Germany built on this in 1999 - 2000 by sponsoring the Bonn-Berlin process, which developed recommendations aimed at improving the effectiveness of arms embargoes and travel sanctions, including flight bans. We hope that similar initiatives will follow. The European Union hopes that in their consideration of issues related to sanctions, the members of the UN Security Council and the UN Secretariat will make frequent reference to the recommendations emerging from these ground-breaking initiatives.

Mr Chairman,

The revised informal working paper, jointly sponsored by the United Kingdom and Sierre Leone,

on dispute prevention and settlement received wide support in last year's session, in which a paragraph-by-paragraph reading was made. We are looking forward to receiving a revised version of the working paper and hope that we can make substantial progress this year in order to conclude our deliberations of this subject.

Regarding the proposal to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the lawfulness of the use of force without an explicit Security Council authorisation, it remains the view of the European Union that it would not be useful to make such a request.

The European Union attaches importance to the update of the Repertoire, which together with the Repertory, gathers important information on the implementation of the UN Charter and on the work of its organs. We commend the Secretary-General for his continued efforts to reduce the severe backlog in their publication. We are also pleased to note that a Trust Fund for the updating of the Repertoire was established in May 2000, to which the United Kingdom, Germany, Portugal and Finland have already contributed.

Finally, Mr Chairman, the European Union is looking forward to a constructive discussion in this year's session of the Charter Committee.

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• EU Presidency Statement - The role of the UN (5/4/2001)