Chair,

I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union and its Member States.

The Candidate Countries* Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia and Ukraine, the potential candidate country Georgia, the EFTA countries Iceland and Norway, members of the European Economic Area, as well as Armenia align themselves with this statement.

1. We thank the Office for the update on the Global Coalition for Social Justice. We also thank the Office for the organization of two fruitful rounds of informal consultations which provided for a better understanding of the framework of the Coalition and what it aims to achieve.
2. The EU continues to strongly support the development of this initiative and its ambition. We believe that the Coalition will elevate the debate on social justice at the global level, which is much needed in this time of growing socio-economic inequalities.
3. As rightly pointed out, the quest for social justice goes beyond the world of work, and therefore the EU and its Member States strongly support the multilateral approach of this initiative and it is logical that the ILO should be at the helm of coordinating these efforts.
4. The Coalition will be a tool for creating more global policy coherence on social justice through a network of multilateral actors beyond the ILO. We believe that including an appropriate balance of tripartite ILO constituents and other interested partners will be important.
5. During the informal consultations many pertinent questions were raised. These highlighted the Coalition’s ambitious task of conquering or creating its new place and added value. The EU and its Member States welcome that the Coalition is explicitly embedded within existing international processes and structures, such as the Agenda 2030 and the development towards the Summit of the Future 2024, the World Social Summit 2025 and beyond. This way  duplications with other initiatives will be avoided.
6. Nevertheless, some aspects concerning the governance of such a Global Coalition still need further clarification, including:

• further details about the role of the Coalition with regard to political dialogue and/or ODA implementation and donor coordination;
• how the relatively small group of Coalition partners will be chosen and what their mandate will be;
• will it be Director-General Houngbo himself who will chair the Coalition’s activities;
• what the various workstreams mentioned in the document will entail and how they will be organised without losing the Coalition’s focus;
• what are the outcomes of the meetings that the DG had with other organizations and potential actors;
• which international organisations does the ILO foresee to ask to join the Coalition and how the organisations and partners will be committed to the goals and tasks of the coalition in the longer run;

7. The EU and its Member States have continuously underlined the importance of close cooperation with the Bretton Woods Institutions and the WTO. We are also happy to hear that multilateral development banks will be included.
8. We believe that such an initiative does not come at zero cost and contrary to what is stated in the document we believe this initiative will have financial implications and would therefore be grateful to hear and see further details on planning in this regard.
9. It will be essential that when the DG's report on Social Justice is discussed at the 111^th ILC, the conclusions of the debate will be taken into account afterwards.
10. We would like to ask that the Office involves constituents in the up-coming preparations of the launch as well as other planned activities.
11. We look forward to getting further information from the Office during this session and with this we are then going to support the decision point as amended by the Workers.

Thank you, Chair.

 

[*Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.]