EU Statement – UN ECOSOC Partnership Forum : Opening Session
Mr. President, distinguished colleagues, I deliver this statement on behalf of the European Union and its Member States as France holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union during this semester.
The Candidate Countries Turkey, the Republic of North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Albania, the country of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidate Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Ukraine, Moldova Georgia, align themselves with this statement.
The EU and its Member States firmly support strengthened participation by all stakeholders, notably women groups and human rights representatives, the private sector and academia in all spheres of ECOSOC’s work. We commend the Partnership Forum for allowing just that.
The multidimensional crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic is still lingering more than two years after its beginning. Its far-reaching impact, affecting all three dimensions of sustainable development, has exacerbated vulnerabilities around the world and threatens our hard-won gains in implementing the SDGs.
These serious setbacks are of great concern to the international community, and they clearly highlight the need for a stronger multilateral system, capable of tackling global issues in an effective and coordinated way. At this crucial time more than ever, the 2030 Agenda is our collective roadmap to achieve a sustainable, inclusive, resilient and just global recovery.
Our most urgent matter is to put an end to the global vaccine divide and to ensure equitable access to quality, safe and affordable vaccines throughout the world. No one is safe until everybody is safe.
We must support health multilateralism and reaffirm the central role of WHO. We lend our full support to the ACT-A initiative, which the G20 including several EU Member States initiated with WHO and the European Commission in April 2020, so as to foster development, production and equitable and universal access to health products and tools to fight COVID-19.
Its vaccine pillar, COVAX, strives to ensure a fair allocation of safe and effective vaccines to be administered according to WHO recommendations. The EU and its member states, acting as team Europe, are the main donor to COVAX with a total of €3.7bn in 2020-2021. Achieving global access to vaccines and strengthening health systems in the long run will be a central theme in the upcoming European Union – African Union summit in Brussels on 17th-18th February.
In order to fulfil our collective pledge to “leave no one behind”, the multilateral system needs to first and foremost address the needs of the least developed countries, who have suffered disproportionally from the pandemic and are most behind on the SDGs. The new Doha programme of action, to be approved shortly, will be a milestone, enacting the international community’s engagement to reach the furthest behind first.
In our race to achieve the SDGs by 2030, the question of sustainable financing should remain a focus of our attention, in the framework set by the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and its follow-up processes, notably the Financing for Development Forum.
The crisis emphasised the need for further cooperation between the UN, other multilateral organizations and relevant G20 initiatives to ensure an effective multilateral response. The Debt Service Suspension Initiative provided from May 2020 to December 2021, the ongoing implementation of the Common Framework for Debt Treatments, and the USD 650bn general allocation of SDRs issued last August by the IMF are all key elements of this collective response.
We recall that ODA, of which the EU is the world-leading provider, was the only stable and resilient external source of financing during the crisis. It remains crucial for financing sustainable development, particularly in the most vulnerable countries. In the long run, building back better will require mobilizing other sources of financing making sure that they are aligned with the SDGs. In this regard, the private sector has a key role to play, and clear standards ought to be set to avoid SDG-washing.
In conclusion, global public goods require coordinated action by all stakeholders, ECOSOC plays a key part in facilitating multilateral cooperation on sustainable development and we strongly support its alignment with the 2030 Agenda.
We are looking forward to this year’s High Level Political Forum under the auspices of the ECOSOC, which will allow us to take stock of the progress made in achieving a sustainable recovery, and to discuss the road still ahead for the realization of all the SDGs, in particular SDGs 4, 5, 14, 15 and 17.
We remain committed to take our full part in the protection of global public goods and the realization of the 2030 Agenda.