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EU Presidency Statement - UN conferences

Mr. Chairman,

Allow me to address you on behalf of the European Union. The Central and Eastern European Countries associated with the European Union - Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia -, the other associated countries Cyprus, Malta and Turkey, and the EFTA country which is a member of the European Economic Area, Liechtenstein, endorse this statement.

1. During its coordination segment last year, the Economic and Social Council discussed the problem of how to apply and follow up the results of the major conferences and summit meetings organized under the aegis of the United Nations in the 1990s. For various reasons, those discussions - held at the suggestion of the European Union - failed to make any significant headway. Having only just completed two fairly intensive five-yearly review procedures in June 2000 (Beijing +5 and Copenhagen +5), perhaps Member States had not had sufficient time to conduct an objective assessment of those procedures. Since then, account must also be taken of the Millennium Summit, the Declaration adopted on that occasion and the follow-up thereto.

2. The report drawn up by the Secretary-General for this agenda item, which - I would emphasize - is of high quality, again therefore deals with poses the fundamental question of procedures for following up major conferences by examining the work of the Council's functional commissions. These were invited by the Council this year to state their positions with regard to follow-up procedures, especially on the question of a timetable.

Mr. President,

3. The year 2001 has special relevance in this context since it marks the end of an almost entire five-yearly review cycle: we have just completed the Habitat +5 review in the context of a Special Session of the General Assembly and November, the five-yearly review of the World Food Summit at the FAO is due to be the last of its kind. Before undertaking any further steps towards making ten-yearly periods for reviewing major conferences virtually automatic, and also given the vast human and financial resources invested by the UN system and Member States, we feel it would be right to consider whether the procedure is appropriate.

4. The main shortcoming of "+5" reviews is well-known: a five-year period would seem to be far too short to allow any meaningful assessment of implementation policies to be made, whether at international or national level. In view of the comprehensive, complex nature of the various plans, action programmes and other conference commitments, including the "+5" reviews, a much longer implementation period is in fact required. As those primarily responsible for implementation, Governments are increasingly aware of the fact that this is a long-term project. All the more reason, therefore, to ensure that the task of assessing or - to be precise - measuring the impact of such implementation is carried out over a longer period, particularly in the case of emerging issues. In addition, the specific nature of the conferences necessarily implies differing implementation periods. Objectives relating to population or the environment do not have the same timescale as highly specific measures in the field of equality, for instance, which may be adopted immediately. By the same token, any across-the-board decision to make five-yearly review procedures automatic would also be inappropriate. Finally, what is in question is the automatic nature not simply the of the review period but also of the format in which reviews are conducted. The EU is not convinced of the need to resort almost systematically to Special Sessions of the General Assembly. Convening so many Special Sessions of the General Assembly over such a short period necessarily means that these lose their "special" status...

5. The follow-up procedures have highlighted other dangers which may not necessarily be apparent in the Secretary-General's report. For instance, the EU is opposed to the tendency of some challenge the past achievements of conferences. Taking the negotiation of these procedures hostage by challenging past agreements and questioning agreed texts is unacceptable. Under no circumstances should a +5 follow-up procedure become a systematic attempt to undermine the main principles and ideas outlined at previous major conferences.

Mr. President,

6. We hope that this agenda item will enable the Economic and Social Council to engage in constructive dialogue on ways of remedying the current shortcomings. Let me just return to the Secretary-General's report, which has the great virtue of making a number of practical suggestions:

• Firstly, the basic procedure for assessing implementation of the results of major conferences should be entrusted to the functional commissions, which are experts in the field. The EU welcomes the decisions taken this year by three of those commissions (the Commission for Social Development, the Commission on the Status of Women and the Commission on Population and Development) to include a five-yearly review in their multiannual programme as a matter of priority. Only the Commission on Human Rights appears to entirely absent from the five yearly review of the Vienna Action Plan. The EU also reaffirms the important role which the UN Regional Commissions should play in any procedure for following up and applying the results of major conferences.
  
  
• Secondly, we are convinced of the need to strengthen the Council's hand in monitoring the follow-up to major conferences. Resolution 50/227 gave the Council a clear mandate in the context of the coordination segment to examine the horizontal and multi-sectoral issues arising from major conferences. The Council is in a position to establish coherent links between conference procedures. While its representativeness may be limited in formal terms, its proceedings are open to all Member States. Moreover, given the theoretical links between this question of follow-up and the item on monitoring the application of Resolution 50/227, it would be perfectly appropriate to consider merging these two agenda items. The Council can also make a significant contribution to the procedure for following up the objectives of the Millennium Declaration in the economic and social field.
  
  
• Finally, as the last stage of this three-stage review procedure, we reaffirm the sovereign right of the General Assembly to decide whether to convene, at a moment of its choosing and taking account of the recommendations of the functional commissions and Ecosoc, a Special Session or any other form of meeting with a high political profile, for the purpose of reviewing the progress made in applying the results of conferences and considering any possible new initiatives on emerging issues.

7. Under this 3-tier approach the EU wishes to underline a basic principle, namely that in future any follow-up to conferences should be conducted through existing structures in the United Nations system. It is also essential that care be taken to avoid possible duplication, contradictions or inconsistencies at each level of the procedure. Of course, those existing structures encompass civil society in its broadest sense, and normal interaction between the United Nations and the Bretton Woods Institutions.

Mr. President,

8. Finally, the EU would like to put forward some more precise ideas on the question of follow-up, namely:

• The participation of experts from the developing countries in meetings of the functional commissions must be strongly encouraged. If need be (for the LDCs in particular), the EU would be in favor of financial support provided by the developed countries in order to ensure the presence of experts from capitals at functional commission meetings.
  
  
• The development of a consistent range of common indicators is indispensable. The monitoring of a limited number of indicators, selected on the basis of conference objectives and Millennium commitments, would be very useful to the functional commissions in evaluating the progress which has been made. In this context, the EU welcomes the decision of the Statistical Commission to serve as a focal point for the UN system for the examination of the indicators used in conference follow-up, in close cooperation with other organizations. The EU supports the Friends of the Presidency Group, set up at the Commission for this purpose, and awaits its report with interest.
  
  
• It is evident that follow-up to the conferences is above all the responsibility of Governments, and that commitments made at conferences should be supplemented firstly at national level, on the ground. In this context, the EU underlines the importance of the Common Country Assessments (CCA) as indicators of follow-up at national level.

Mr. President,

9. The major conferences, and their follow-up meetings every five years, have provided an opportunity to galvanize civil society and mobilize policies on basic world problems in a context of globalization. This mobilization on a common agenda has taken root at national level. Women from all over the world met in Beijing in 1995, and in New York five years later with the same enthusiasm. Children will meet again in September, ten years after their first summit, to revive international awareness of their cause and above all of their rights. The EU will certainly not go back on its commitment to make every effort to implement the objectives of the United Nations conferences. The sometimes critical evaluation which I have felt compelled to make, regarding the procedure for following up these Conferences, does not in any way indicate a lack of interest on our part, but on the contrary the conviction that better organized and better targeted follow-up would make it possible for the international community to achieve those objectives and to carry through the commitments for development and poverty reduction made by 150 Heads of State or Government at the turn of the Millennium.

Thank you for your attention.

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