Chair,

I have the honour to speak on behalf of the EU and its Member States. The candidate countries Türkiye, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova and Bosnia and Herzegovina[1]  and Georgia, the EFTA countries Iceland and Norway, members of the European Economic Area, as well as San Marino, align themselves with this statement.

The EU wishes to thank the Director of the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), Mr. Paul Manning, and the OIOS staff for their report.

The EU and its Member States reiterate the importance of objective and systematic evaluation and monitoring, guided by the internationally recognised criteria of relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, results-based delivery and sustainability. We call on the Department of Technical Cooperation (TC) to fully utilise the evaluation findings and recommendations in its future programme planning and implementation.

We welcome the OIOS’ conclusion that the Agency’s work in Africa related to scientific knowledge creation and transfer of nuclear technologies in food safety, mutation breeding and pest control is highly effective. In this regard, the EU greatly appreciates that the OIOS also considered the context of the joint FAO and IAEA Atoms4Food initiative, which emphasises a multidisciplinary and integrated approach to the entire agricultural value chain, addressing the needs of countries holistically.

We equally welcome the recognised benefits of the TC regional and interregional projects for Member States, which facilitate knowledge sharing and address common needs.

However, we also note the areas for improvement to enhance the management and operations of TC projects. In line with the OIOS recommendations, we encourage the Agency to more effectively align its TC projects with national development objectives and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to promote engagement and collaboration with relevant counterparts in the regions.

While welcoming that gender mainstreaming was considered in the design of several projects, we regret the OIOS’ conclusion that a gender perspective has still not been adequately mainstreamed into the Agency’s TC activities. The OIOS’ evaluation found that gender mainstreaming remains limited in practice, and that monitoring and reporting on gender-related activities and outcomes are still underdeveloped. We expect this issue to be addressed as a matter of priority.

Finally, Chair,

The EU and its Member States look forward to the Secretariat’s timely and full implementation of all recommendations issued by OIOS in 2024 and any further outstanding recommendations from previous programme evaluations. We continue to support the important work of the OIOS and look forward to engaging with the Office on its future evaluation work plan.

With these comments, we take note of document GOV/2024/59.

Thank you, Chair.

[1] North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.