Sommaire: EU Presidency Statement - Mandate Review (New York, 14 June 2006)
General Assembly, Tenth Informal Plenary Meeting on Mandate Review; Statement by Ambassador Gerhard Pfanzelter, Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations, on behalf of the European Union.
Mr. Chairman,
I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union.
The Acceding Countries Bulgaria and Romania, the Candidate Countries Turkey, Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia , the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, and the EFTA country Norway, member of the European Economic Area, as well as Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova align themselves with this declaration.
First and foremost, I would like to thank the Co-Chairs for the efforts they have invested to date in guiding the work of the Plenary on Mandate Review.
Mr Chairman,
The EU welcomes the efforts by the Secretariat to produce a revised and better structured summary of proposals and positions of Member States as well as slightly revised additional documents. The compilation paper now more accurately reflects comments made by delegations in the informal plenary discussions, including those made by the EU. It is also useful to ensure transparency of the process by allowing all Member States to have a bird's eye view of proposals put forward in Mandate Review. At
the same time, the summary paper contains a number of concrete proposals which could be discussed and agreed upon, also in the short term. We also welcome the additional papers provided by the Secretariat for reference purposes.
Mr. Chairman,
The EU also welcomes the letter of the Co-Chairs of 12 June as an effort to take forward concrete work on Mandate Review in the month of June. We are willing, as Co-Chairs suggest, to "commence the consideration of five-year old non-renewed mandates" and "other possible areas where there can be agreement". We see this as an opportunity to practically advance the process without lengthy procedural discussions and hope to reach concrete decisions, also in the short term. We understand this
discussion will take place without prejudice to a later consensus-decision on the scope of the exercise. In our understanding, to be meaningful, Mandate Review should also cover mandates older than five years and renewed in the meantime. This aspect can be part of the second phase of the Review. As we have emphasised, politically sensitive mandates should be approached with appropriate sensitivity.
In the consultations of the next weeks, we should reach decisions by consensus on the following short term objectives:
Obtain first results on identifying and consolidating obsolete, redundant and unnecessarily duplicative mandates among those older than five years and non-renewed.
Consolidate reporting requirements and work towards introducing "a set of core policy reports" thereby drawing upon the Secretary-General's proposals and the Secretariat's additional documents.
Agree to establish a pilot-project for the review of mandates in a specific area, for instance in the Cluster on Humanitarian Assistance.
Establish an objective, transparent, credible and on-going Mandate Review process covering all mandates older than five years for the following phases.
Improve the mandate generation cycle by introducing "mandate impact assessment" as proposed by the Secretary-General.
Consolidate some politically less sensitive UN observances.
The EU has, in its statements in the informal Plenary sessions to date, set out examples of areas where we believe results can be achieved and areas of overlap where follow-up work is needed. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss these concrete proposals in more detail and are looking forward to hearing and discussing proposals from other delegations in this room.
More specifically on the proposals for consolidated reporting and core-reports, the EU requests the Secretariat to give a short oral presentation on how the introduction of core-reports would positively affect the use of resources within the Secretariat.
For all of us to get a practical sense of the added value of Mandate Review, the EU reiterates its suggestion for a pilot-project in one of the clusters where progress seems more viable and also feasible in a shorter time-frame. We would then be able to build upon the experience with Mandate Review collected in the course of the pilot-project on Humanitarian Affairs to advance other specific areas of follow-up and the general track of the review. "Cluster E" on "Effective coordination of
humanitarian assistance efforts" would lend itself well to such a pilot-project. In this cluster alone, there are for instance 350 mandates older than five years and not renewed, which provides ample scope for reviewing those in depth and for making specific recommendations on reducing redundancy. This could include decisions on re-grouping Humanitarian work in the GA, agreeing on introducing core-reports, clarifying the division of labour between the GA and ECOSOC and streamlining post-crisis
reporting.
Mr. Chairman,
In his letter dated 7 June 2006 the President of the General Assembly wrote that "the litmus test and measuring rod for UN Reforms must be the difference they make for people and crises areas around the world". The EU concurs and it is in this spirit that the EU has engaged in all the different aspects of the reform debate. In the context of the mandate review the EU has supported and presented proposals which in our view do make a substantial contribution to a more effective and efficient
UN.
We understand that the way forward in the short, medium and long term needs to be based on a time-table on which we should agree as soon as possible. The EU strongly encourages the Co-Chairs to draw up and circulate such a road map at the earliest possible moment and to follow up in depth on specific ideas.
The EU will continue to actively contribute to this exercise by examining the Secretariat's and other delegations' suggestions. This is the time to redouble in our efforts to foster consensus. We look forward to continuing work together with our partners on all aspects of this important exercise, aiming at reaching consensus in the next weeks.
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