EU Opening Statement – UN General Assembly: Zero Draft Decision on the scope for the ‘Summit of the Future’

Distinguished co-facilitators,

On behalf of the EU and its Member States, allow me once again to express our appreciation for your efforts towards drafting a concise and balanced decision on the scope of the Summit of the Future. This is by no means an easy undertaking. I will provide specific comments when we go para by para, but would like to make some general remarks at the outset.

First, we fully support your approach for going for a decision rather than a resolution. We already agreed a modalities resolution last summer after lengthy negotiations and will certainly have complex negotiations on the actual Summit outcome document ahead of us next year. This decision shall by no means pre-empt discussions on the actual substance and we should treat it as what it is. A concise decision should also help us get to an agreement soon, hopefully by end of July, but definitely ahead of the Ministerial meeting during High-Level-Week, for our Ministers’ endorsement. We suggest this ambition be reflected in the decision.

Secondly, we support the proposed overall structure for the Summit of the Future outcome document to consist of a chapeau and dedicated chapters, each containing specific policy elements. There are certainly different views on the precise number and headings of the chapters. In particular, Cluster IV contains many different elements, which would have merited dedicated chapters. But, we also support your reasoning, co-facilitators, to keep the ‘Pact for the Future’ manageable. Therefore, we can get along with your four proposed chapters.

Thirdly, we support the chapeau recalling the overarching objectives of the ‘Pact for the Future’, notably to reinvigorate multilateralism, strengthen global governance and find concrete solutions for current and future generations. As mentioned in the decision, the UN Charter, the 2030 Agenda, the UN75 Political Declaration and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights remain our roadmaps.

Fourth, talking about human rights, we flagged already during the presentation of the zero draft our strong commitment to ensuring a prominent placement for human rights, gender equality and women empowerment in the decision, and, more importantly, as cross-cutting elements for the Pact, alongside international law and sustainable development. 75 years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights we are falling behind on our commitments and must take concrete actions to fix this situation. Human rights remain one of the 3 key pillars of the UN! We welcome your attempt to capture this commitment under (b), which we feel would still deserve further reinforcement  

Fifth, when it comes to the actual policy elements, we certainly see the reasoning why you included them, also following the guidance provided by the Secretary-General in ‘Our Common Agenda’ and the logic for addressing specific gaps in our governance and our response. In a constructive spirit, we can go along with this list, provided others will also take a reasonable approach. As I said before, we see clear merit in having these elements agreed as part of this decision as to provide us with our roadmap. We must not allow losing further time as otherwise; we run the risk of not achieving the transformational Summit we called for. This does not mean that we close our eyes to realities on the ground in the year to come. If required, we trust that those could still be reflected in the actual negotiations of the Pact, without having to reopen the decision.

The only additions we would have for now are to ensure that when talking about sustainable development that we include all three dimensions: economic, social and environmental. In addition to the important financing dimension, we must not forget our commitment to implement in full the milestone agreements on climate and the environment, such as Paris and Montreal-Kunming, and the important social dimension on leaving no one behind, including, in particular, women and girls.

Sixth, closely linked, we must reiterate that the Summit outcome be a combination of advancing and accelerating the implementation of existing agreements, most notably the 2030 Agenda, and of filling gaps in global governance with new policy tools that would improve the effectiveness of the UN’s response to crises and challenges. Duplication and overlaps with existing structures and processes must be avoided. We will provide language to further clarify in this regard.

This must also be reflected when it comes to the appointment of co-facilitators during the next session. We see the merit of – so to say – leading co-facilitator pair for the actual negotiations of the Pact for the Future, as is the case for the SDG Summit outcome, and would appreciate your further thoughts on how you envisage the overall set-up, recognizing that your mandate for now is limited to the current session.

This said, we would certainly be supportive of both of you continuing in this position.

I thank you.