EU Presidency Statement - UN ECE 57th Session on 'Technical assistance'

Mr. Chairman,

We thank the Executive Secretary and the Chairperson of the Group of Experts on the Programme of Work for her report on this item. We support the conclusions of document E/ECE/1393, particularly those included in paragraphs 3, 4 and 5, and expect the Secretariat to adopt them as recommendations of this Annual Session, in spite of what is mentioned in paragraph 7. This document should be the basis for the continuation of the dialogue between the Group of Experts and the Secretariat on technical support issues, including the role and functions of regional and technical advisers and the Coordinating Unit for Operational Activities.

Concerning technical assistance, the European Commission briefed the Annual Session last Wednesday on the different programmes and activities the European Union provides to many members of the ECE and we will refer interested delegation to this statement. We would like to mention under this agenda item the following points:

The technical assistance provided by the ECE should not be carried out at the expense of core traditional activities like norm setting.

We would like to receive information from the Secretariat on the evaluation of the impact of a possible increase of technical assistance activities on the reassignment of staff, on a basis of a non-increased budget. This evaluation should be presented to member States before any decision on this subject is made.

While the presented information on activities funded from regular budget sources is quite comprehensive, this is unfortunately not the case with regard to activities based on voluntary funding. We would therefore like to encourage the Secretariat to present as soon as possible complete information on voluntary contributions to all technical assistance activities.

We believe that the efficiency Regional Advisers could be enhanced if they were assigned to the Divisions responsible for specific projects. An overall horizontal coordination would be necessary to avoid strict compartmentalization and provide for flexible assignments of expertise when necessary.

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• EU Presidency Statement - Adoption of the Agenda for the UN ECE 57th Session (23/4/2002)