- As delivered -

Thank you, Mr President, for convening us shortly after the High-Level Week and for your inspirational statement this morning. Thank you very much Secretary-General, for your presentation and for your constant push to move the Common Agenda forward, for the policy briefs that you have produced and also thank you to the co-facilitators that have helped us to move forward on this very important task.

I have some very brief comments on behalf of the EU and its Member States. I wanted to start by referring to something you said, Mr. President, that is really about focusing on rebuilding trust. Trust among everyone in this room who are committed to move forward on multilateralism and build trust the way we did to produce the SDG Declaration just a few days ago. But it is also about building trust for the people in the world - the trust that they hope to see in this organisation and in the multilateral system delivering on their legitimate demands. It is true that we have not fulfilled that promise for quite a while, for various reasons, and that OCA is very much an effort to come back to that kind of delivery.

1. To rebuild that trust, first we need to focus on the Summit of the Future and let the OCA and its broad scope be one that really re-commits to effective multilateralism. We want to come into this with ambition. We want to see that there are tangible results and that we also discuss seriously the gaps that exist in global governance. So, ambitious, tangible results and an urgency to get to work.

2. Secondly, the trust that we need to produce is also one that needs to build on the various commitments that we have all taken – commitment to the UN Charter, commitment to the 2030 Agenda, Paris Agreement, the SDG Declaration from last week. And we need to ensure strong synergies with the various issues that we are working on:  Financing for Development, climate ambitions, health declarations, initiatives like the Global Digital Compact, Declaration for Future Generations, New Agenda for Peace, Beyond GDP, Pact for the Future, etc. All of them hold the promise of transformative change and it is really our responsibility to translate this into concrete actions in a coordinated manner.

Part of this is the global governance system, one that we see the need to reform it in a way that makes it deliver in time, be responsive, but also to be more representative and thereby more legitimate. This is something we are very seriously engaging with everyone on. We also support proposals on the code of conduct, on the integrity of public information, UN 2.0, strengthening the rule of law, and, of course, filling with substance this new social contract, one that would, as we see it, enable the full respect of human rights in all their dimensions.

3. Something equally important is of course the gender equality mission, one that we believe should underpin everything we do and that holds the promise of releasing resources and capacities throughout our countries if we are able to release the empowerment of women and girls.

Finally, and I think you mentioned it Secretary-General very well, that in order to be successful,  we need to include civil society, the private sector, academia, in order to build ownership and to capture all the excellent ideas and dynamics that are out there, outside the UN. So, thank you for stressing that. We fully support it.

Colleagues, a country that I know well has contributed to refurbishing this hall with new seats. Let us not use those seats for comfort but more so as a symbol that change is possible.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.