EU Statement – United Nations 2nd Committee: Revitalisation

Mr. Chair,

I have the honor to deliver this statement on behalf of the EU and its Member States.

The Candidate Countries 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 and the Republic of Moldova, align themselves with this statement.

As you know, Mr. Chair, 2C revitalization discussions as well as alignment discussions have been taking place for years and the European Union and its Member States would like to reaffirm our continued commitment to ambitious, tangible change as a matter of urgency. I will focus on 2C revitalization only today. We thank you, Mr. Chair, and the Bureau for your leadership and guidance, as well as for preparing the updated informal paper on the revitalization of the Second Committee. We acknowledge and are encouraged by the initial progress made last year.
We started the Decade of Action in the midst of a global pandemic. This has solidified our conviction that a revitalized, fit-for-purpose Committee is essential in order to effectively and efficiently address new and emerging challenges.

The extraordinary working modalities that we collectively agreed on and collectively stuck to during last year’s 2C session, clearly demonstrated how we can ensure a successful Committee season by agreeing on parameters early on and acting jointly in order to continue our work in an efficient manner. We also saw great levels of trust built among delegations when we jointly developed these working modalities and together ensured that they would be fully respected. This dedication to efficiency and this level of trust is what we can and should build on together when continuing our discussions on the revitalization of the Second Committee.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development should become the bedrock of all of our efforts in the Second Committee. 2C needs to evolve and keep up with the changing world around it. We can no longer tolerate insufficient progress on revitalization, and we would be doing ourselves a disservice by continuing to spend time and resources on matters that do not reflect the continuously evolving challenges of today’s world.

Mr. Chair, we would like to address the issues we find most pressing, and reiterate and build on some of the ideas we presented in the past. At the outset, we were happy to see some of the revitalization elements implemented during this past 2C session, such as the refocusing of the former Agenda 21 resolution to SDG 12: Circular Economy, and the incorporation of El Niño into the Disaster Risk Reduction resolution. In terms of working methods, we were equally satisfied to see improvement in the provision of drafts in Word with tracked changes, as well as the increased inclusion of sources.

Moving forward, our concrete proposals are the following:

First and foremost, the driving force behind the Committee’s agenda should be the 2030 Agenda. The discussion of the 2C items should contribute directly to the implementation of the Decade of Action.

Secondly, we strongly believe that improvements can be made by refocusing, merging, discontinuing, or widening the periodicity of some resolutions. We also remain open to discussing how some of the resources we manage to free up can be used to better tackle pressing challenges that currently might not get the attention they deserve and fill these gaps. Examples already included in the informal paper are the following:

• The sand and dust storms resolution could be easily integrated in the UNCCD resolution.

• We could also further explore the integration of all the tourism resolutions into one Sustainable tourism resolution.
• We believe we would benefit from a substantive resolution on SDG 6: clean water and sanitation. This would fill a substantial gap.

In addition to these proposals:

• The Education for sustainable development and the Human Resources Development resolutions could be merged into one resolution dealing with issues related to education and its role with regard to full and productive employment, combining SDGs 4 and 8. 
• The ICT and STI-resolutions could also easily be merged.
• In the same vein, we would propose to merge the Eradication of poverty and Rural poverty resolutions.
• We believe we could integrate the issue of commodities and unilateral economic measures in the Trade resolution.
• We should take the same approach for all three issues covered by the Rio Conventions. In the same way that the climate resolution deals with “climate” thematically and not with the implementation of the UNFCCC, we should have a resolution on biodiversity (not the implementation of the CBD) and on desertification, land degradation and drought (rather than the implementation of UNCCD). This would facilitate integrating related resolutions that may be not linked to a specific Convention but to the topic as such.
• The resolutions New International Economic Order, Harmony with Nature and Role of the United Nations in promoting development in the context of globalization and interdependence, should be discontinued as they are outdated, building on concepts from decades past.
• Lastly, we should avoid the proliferation of regional resolutions and as a rule of thumb discontinue regional resolutions as recurring resolutions.

To allow for meaningful, forward-looking, cross-regional and evidence-based negotiations in all resolutions, a starting point would be to have a comprehensive discussion on the periodicity of each resolution. While we of course continue to fully acknowledge the right of every Member State to introduce resolutions, we believe that annual resolutions are not beneficial to the Committee’s work as we fail to include useful updates in the texts we negotiate. Instead, we propose alternating current, as well as any new resolutions, on a biennial basis at minimum. In addition to this, we could explore a cap on periodic 2C resolutions in any given session. This would provide us with the time and space needed to effectively address all pressing challenges.

We should also consider introducing sunset clauses for all recurring existing and new resolutions, adapted to the specific issue they are covering. No specific issue remains relevant for all eternity in its current form.

Thirdly, we agree that the trend of mandating a report in every resolution is a topic for further discussion. Reports should only be requested when they

1. do not duplicate existing analysis and reporting efforts by the UN system and
2. are likely to facilitate the implementation of the resolution or the continued examination of the question.

Joint reporting on agenda items of a similar nature should be considered favorably. For instance, in the macro-economic cluster, we would propose utilizing the FSDR as a comprehensive report of all UN agencies on FfD issues, including deliberations in the Second Committee on macro-economic issues, and not only as a guidance for the ECOSOC FfD Forum. In this regard, separate SG reports on top of the FSDR report should not be requested. The resolutions on Financial Inclusion and Sustainable Investment already use the FSDR report and are therefore great examples.

A step towards rationalization of outcomes could also be achieved by ensuring that all reporting mandates ask for an empirical analysis, have a clearer focus on the contribution to the 2030 Agenda implementation and contain more specific, evidence-based and action-oriented recommendations, taking into account the agreed SDG indicators. This would make the reports relevant for use in other forums, such as the HLPF, contributing to a broader evidence base for policy making while saving scarce resources.

My fourth point relates to working methods. We appreciated the efforts of the Bureau to facilitate the discussions on our special working modalities last fall, and to implement them effectively. And we appreciated the efforts of all delegations to adhere to them. It is our view that we should continue the strict adherence to any pre-agreed working methods of the Committee.

Apart from the above, we feel that the general discussion on each and every agenda item in the plenary does not add value to the Committee’s work. The time could be better used by starting substantive negotiations at an earlier stage. 

Negotiation dynamics would benefit from a smaller setting exchange on the relevant SG report and a clear identification of where the challenges lie, before delegations move on to working on specific drafts.

My fifth and last point circles back to trust. Again, we have seen the positive impact of the improved trust relationships among delegations during this past session and we should use the momentum to further build trust in order to enhance the work of the Committee. We believe we can achieve this by looking at the possibilities of co-authorship of zero draft resolutions in combination with co-facilitation of draft resolutions.

Mr. Chair, we count on your proven leadership in ensuring that these discussions be fruitful and we reach an outcome that constitutes not a step, but a leap, in the direction of revitalizing the Committee. We are at your disposal to elaborate on our proposals and look forward to discussing those put forward by others.

I thank you.

* The Republic of North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Albania continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.