Presidents,

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

The Candidate Countries North Macedonia, Serbia, Albania, Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the potential candidate country Georgia align themselves with this statement.

We thank you for this joint briefing.

The EU remains a staunch supporter of the revitalization of the work of the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council and of the close alignment of both agendas towards the full realisation of the 2030 Agenda, which will be our common top priority this year as to ensure a successful SDG Summit.

Part of this effort is avoiding duplication and overlaps in the agendas of these principal organs, as outlined inter alia in resolution 75/325 on revitalization of the work of the General Assembly.

This will free up time and allow resources to be used effectively to implement the 2030 Agenda and to address emerging global issues of an important and urgent nature.

Joint briefings of the Presidents of the GA and ECOSOC, such as the one of today, is useful in identifying common priorities for both bodies and streamlining the respective agendas.

There is still some way to go. Last spring for example, we witnessed within one week high-level meetings on the New Urban Agenda organised under ECOSOC and then under the General Assembly, without obvious thematic complementarity.

Moving forward, the work of both the GA and ECOSOC will continue to be dominated by multiple crises of rising prices, a warming planet, and deadly conflicts.

Achieving the SDGs was already an uphill struggle before, and has become so much harder since the COVID19 pandemic and Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine.

As we have outlined in Tuesday’s debate on GA-priorities, the EU and its Member States will be strong supporters and active participants in the SDG Summit and all related meetings this year, such as the LDC5 Summit, the UN Water Conference, mid-term review of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Climate Ambition Summit.

We are also looking forward to strong and action-oriented outcomes of the health-related high-level meetings in September on universal health coverage, tuberculosis and pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response, which we hope will contribute to stronger and speedier recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, which is still felt strongly in many parts of the world especially in most vulnerable and fragile countries. Both the GA and ECOSOC have a role to play here.

On humanitarian issues, it is important that in a more turbulent and polarized international landscape both the GA Plenary and ECOSOC continue to adopt all humanitarian resolutions by consensus.

In this context, let me say that we support the UN’s central role in coordinating the international humanitarian response to natural and manmade disasters. We believe that our humanitarian priorities and response should remain centered on respect for International Humanitarian Law, safeguarding the humanitarian space including unimpeded access to people in need, and measures to ensure the safety and security of humanitarian and medical workers, as well as on strengthening anticipatory and early action. We hope that both bodies, the GA and ECOSOC, will be instrumental in upholding these principles.

An active involvement of NGOs is important for the functioning of both the GA and ECOSOC. Civil society is a key part of the response to the challenges I was referring to before. We need to ensure that CSOs can contribute to our deliberations and, in that respect, we feel that the rules governing the NGO Committee should be urgently reviewed in order to make its proceedings more transparent, efficient and accountable.

Also on the ECOSOC side, last year saw a review of the work of its subsidiary bodies. One of the conclusions drawn from the review was that we have to do a better job in taking into account the work of its many specialized bodies, especially those which are based far away from New York. We should therefore look at ways of addressing this concern – the complexity of the issues we deal with requires the specialised input of these bodies. We hope that a recently established Coordination Segment that held its first meeting last year, will come again strongly this year and bring together heads of UN agencies, funds and programmes as well as ECOSOC subsidiary bodies to inform this cycle of ECOSOC including HLPF in July to pave the way to a successful SDG Summit.

These are some observations in the context of today’s meeting. I thank you and look forward to the further discussion.