I deliver this statement on behalf of the European Union and its Member States.

The Candidate Countries Albania*, Tuerkiye*, North Macedonia*, Montenegro^* and Serbia*,  Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova, the country of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidate Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Georgia, Andorra, Monaco and San Marino align themselves with this statement.

The EU and its MS welcome the adoption of this enabling resolution. As a sign of our strong support 27 EU Member States have cosponsored it.  

We would like to thank South Africa as well as Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Costa Rica, Ghana, Indonesia, Jamaica, New Zealand, Rwanda, Sweden and Viet Nam for their leadership on garnering political support for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. The lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic have clearly underlined that we need to improve global health security, prevent and prepare better for future pandemics in a joint and global effort. The importance of this issue cannot be overstated.

Team Europe, the EU and its MS, have been at the global forefront of showing multilateral solidarity and responding to the COVID 19 pandemic, whether it be in supporting countries in need with essential health supplies, providing vaccines to low and middle income countries, or providing support to vaccine manufacturing capacities in developing countries.

The EU strongly supports multilateral action. In the forward-looking perspective the EU and its MS will be the first to support initiatives that aim to strengthen political support of the global community for measures to prevent and respond to future pandemics.

We expect this initiative at the UN general Assembly to be fully aligned with and complementary to the negotiations mandated by the World Health Assembly, as well as reforms of the IHR,  the establishment of the new Financial Intermediary Fund for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response at the World Bank and the Global Health and Foreign Policy Initiative at the UNGA.

We also trust that the preparatory process will be open, transparent and inclusive, reflecting contributions from all relevant stakeholders.

We must ensure full inclusion of the World Health Organization in every step of this process, to provide technical guidance and leadership and help ensure complementarity between New York and Geneva processes.

Lastly, we would like to stress that the timing of this initiative should remain flexible to ensure that it provides the best possible timing and support to ongoing negotiations. 

The EU would also like to avail itself of this opportunity to inform the UN membership of a forthcoming renewed EU Global Health Strategy, and invite stakeholders to partake in the ongoing public consultation in preparation of this Strategy.  

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