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Mr. President,

I am honoured to speak on behalf of the EU and its 28 Member States.

The Candidate Countries North Macedonia*, 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.

Over recent years, the EU has welcomed the in-depth analyses conducted by the UN to review the global peace and security architecture. The reform currently being implemented by the UN Secretariat is a crucial step in adapting our collective action, making it fit-for-purpose. The "Action for Peacekeeping" (A4P) initiative, which aims at renewing our collective engagement and attaining excellence, is another important milestone in this direction.

The EU and its Member States continue to stress the paramount importance of political solutions to conflicts, of addressing root causes and drivers of conflict, as well as the priority that should be given to prevention. This is a central component of our own EU Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy and drives our efforts to strengthen the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy, structures and instruments. This is also in line with the UN Secretary-General's determination to place prevention at the centre of the United Nations' peace and security efforts. Only an integrated approach can lead to truly sustaining peace, and in that respect the quality of the training and the overall performance of the peacekeepers are of paramount importance.

The deployment of United Nations peacekeeping in fragile political and security environments, have resulted in a rise in the number of deaths as well as other security incidents. We unwaveringly support measures being developed and undertaken to improve the safety and security of UN personnel. We are committed to exploring all options which contribute to the safety and security on the ground of UN peacekeepers and, by so doing, to ensure better protection of civilians and guarantee a more effective maintenance of peace.  

The EU and its Member States have been leading efforts over the last few years to ensure the safety and security of the UN personnel. In this context, we welcome UN initiatives to better integrate modern technology and peacekeeping intelligence capabilities into peace operations. By helping to improve the situational awareness of troops and police in real time, this will contribute to the implementation of the missions' mandates, to the protection of civilians and to the security of the personnel, including humanitarian actors, on the ground. But technology alone cannot be the solution. Instead, a coherent combination of modern technology with relevant methods put at the disposal of well prepared and trained staff is imperative. We continue to support efforts by the UN to further develop these capacities for current and future missions, including through our own UN-EU Partnership on Peace Operations and Crisis Management.

Mr. President,

In many ways, training is central to carrying out peacekeeping mandates. In the spirit of A4P, we believe that training and equipping properly mission personnel, before and during deployment – whether they belong to a military, police or civilian component – and on the basis of consolidated standards is crucial to ensure mission success as well as to safeguard the safety and security of peacekeepers. It is essential in our view that such training includes pre-deployment and in-mission training adapted to operational challenges and focused on gender and human rights components, including child protection, women, peace and security, and combating sexual and gender-based violence as well as sexual exploitation and abuse. This is especially relevant in increasingly complex environments and could also be enhanced in cooperation with regional actors.

Moreover, for us, relevant and appropriate training remains the cornerstone of any performance policy. We welcome the UNSG's emphasis on increased accountability and his efforts to strengthen the system's ability to deal with sexual exploitation and abuse swiftly and decisively. We remain committed to working on the long-term with partners, all TCCs, PCCs and stakeholders in a spirit of genuine cooperation, ensuring that prevention measures are further strengthened, victims are provided with assistance, allegations are duly investigated, and justice is served by the countries who contributed the personnel. We also want to see the Secretariat optimally configured, and delivering as one.

In line with Resolution 2436 (2018), we very much welcome progress on the development of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment System (CPAS) with clear standards of performance for assessing and evaluating all UN civilian and uniformed personnel. Robust and objective methodologies based on clear and well identified benchmarks are central to improving mission planning and evaluation, but also mandate implementation at large.

Finally, we continue to underscore the importance of protection of civilians as a core task of peacekeeping. In this regard, regular assessments constitute an indispensable part of our performance policy, as they ensure that the protection of civilians under threat of physical violence is fulfilled. The establishment of the Strategic Planning and Monitoring Unit in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General is a welcome step forward, towards improved assessments and enhanced operational output. The European Troop and Police Contributing Countries will continue to support the Secretariat to bring both the capacity and willingness to create safer environments for communities under peacekeepers' protection.

Training is primarily a member state responsibility in order to provide well‐trained and well‐equipped uniformed personnel, and partake in a collective effort to better prepare, train and equipped these personnel. However, the EU, through the deployment of its own missions and operations, implements a whole array of action in matters of training and capacity-building, with a view to complement the UN's efforts in this regard.

Indeed, the EU will continue to be a loyal partner, not only by supporting UN Peacekeeping operations, but also within the framework of our strengthened Common Security and Defence Policy. We continue to support each other and asset-sharing in-theatre, be it in Mali, Central Africa Republic, Somalia, Libya, the Balkans or Iraq. We share best practices on conduct and discipline, and lessons learned from strategic reviews and assessments of our missions and operations. In our bi-annual Steering Committee between the EU and the UN, we discuss operational needs, agree on benchmarks and ensure the strategic direction of our partnership; all to better align our efforts and improve our modalities for cooperation in different areas.

This is reflected in the recently adopted 2019-2021 priorities of the UN-EU Strategic Partnership. As one of our eight priorities, we have agreed to contribute to the enhancement of performance by reinforcing cooperation on training and capacity-building, including on exercises. To this end, we are exploring how our services could help facilitate support from EU Member States for different types of trainings including on human rights, International Humanitarian Law and gender, as well as other relevant trainings. This means engaging more systematically with the European Security and Defence College, as well as with the European Association for Peacekeeping Training Centres (EAPTC).

We are also deeply committed to advancing the Women, Peace and Security agenda. We welcome the recently approved Uniformed Gender Parity Strategy for 2018-28 (UGPS) and all efforts aimed at increasing the number and participation of women in peacekeeping and integrating a gender perspective in all phases of the policy-making process and analysis. Part of the solution lies in increasing the quantity and quality of training for women personnel.

We made Women, Peace and Security the first of the UN-EU 2019-2021 joint priorities, as well as a cross-cutting priority across all areas of cooperation. Our missions and operations, are already working together on the ground to enhance the integration of a gender perspective throughout their activities. We are mapping ongoing cooperation on the ground and as mentioned during the UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial on 29 March, we have agreed to organise a joint UN-EU Workshop in Brussels, on enabling factors for engaging more women in all roles and areas of expertise, and at all levels of peacekeeping and crisis management. The aim of this joint effort is to build on already ongoing work and existing data in this area, and arrive at a set of practical recommendations that will be shared widely. We hope to encourage a practice of regular informed and practical exchanges on enabling factors for engaging more women in peacekeeping between EU Member States, other UN Troop and Police-contributing countries and experts in this area.

In conclusion, Mr. President, the EU welcomes the emphasis that Secretary-General Guterres puts upon partnerships, and the EU-UN Partnership in particular as key to global peace and security.

Thank you.

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