Sumario: EU Presidency Statement - United Nations: 6th Committee informal consultations concerning sub-topic for consideration for 62nd session (29 March 2007: New York)
Statement by the Presidency, on behalf of the European Union, during the informal consultations of the Chairman of the United Nations General Assembly 6th Committee concerning the sub-topic to be chosen for consideration by the 6th Committee for its 62nd session, New York
The EU welcomes this early opportunity to start consultations with our Bureau on the topic or topics to be chosen for the debate on our agenda item as of the 62nd session. EU had supported the inclusion of the new item "rule of law" on the agenda of the 6th Committee from the beginning, for various reasons which do not need repetition here.
We also welcomed the idea to choose annually a sub-topic for discussion. "Rule of law at the national and international levels" means too many things at the same time - for member states and the UN as a whole - to be discussed as such. The rule of law is, as the Secretary-General has underlined, a cross-cutting issue for the work of the UN in almost every field. For any debate in the confines of the 6th Committee to be useful in carrying the concept forward, the item has to be broken down into
sub-items which are meaningful and, so to speak, "manageable". The idea was, if I recall last year's discussions correctly, to find items which are suitable to be discussed within a limited time and where a debate may provide useful input for the work of members states and the UN. Those items should be announced well in advance so as to allow member states proper preparation. And besides, only if the topics we choose are in themselves limited and concrete enough can we expect the
Secretary-General to provide the kind of useful ands concise reports on which to base our discussion without overburdening the Secretariat.
Because of the sheer dimension of the topic the EU had also early on underlined that when choosing a topic we should avoid the duplication of discussion which are already under way elsewhere. The non-paper which the Bureau had circulated last fall contained already a number of issues that could be taken up in the future. One of the issues which we found particularly interesting and suitable in the sense of what I had outlined is the question of strengthening criminal justice at the national and
international levels
Please note: For the consultations on 29 March, it was agreed that the EU should limit itself to two (i.e., one to be proposed and one in reserve) topics. The second - reserve - topic identified by partners was "International dispute settlement mechanisms as means to strengthen the rule of law". At our EU coordination on 28 March we also discussed considering "Strengthening the rule of law through wider accession to and ratification of international treaties and their implementation", but
only as a possible topic of last resort if others insist.
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