EU Presidency Statement - Peacekeeping to the Fifth Committee at its Second Resumed Session

Mr. Chairman,

I have to honour to speak on behalf of the European Union. The Candidate Countries of Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey; the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro and the EFTA countries Iceland and Liechtenstein, members of the European Economic Area, align themselves with this statement.

The European Union actively supports and participates in UN mandated peacekeeping operations and other relevant activities throughout the world, contributing large numbers of troops, civilian police and other personnel from our Member States.

The European Security Strategy, adopted by the European Council last December, signals the Union's movement towards a more strategic approach in the area of external action, including enhancing the Union's ability to respond to UN requests in short-term crisis management situations. The European Union is also responding to requests from the African Union, in establishing the European Union Peace Facility for Africa which will be operational shortly, This is in addition to the efforts made by European Member States to support the enhancement of African peacekeeping capacities.

We have always attached great importance to peacekeeping as a core task of the Organization and will continue to do what is necessary to ensure that UN peacekeeping is effective and serves the needs of maintaining peace throughout the world in this time of new and complex missions and rising costs.

We intend to continue to demonstrate that commitment at this session by careful scrutiny of peacekeeping budgetary management practices. As the largest collective financial contributor to the peacekeeping budget, the European Union will also closely examine the budgets of all the peacekeeping missions, as well as the support functions, with the view to providing them with adequate financing.

We understand that a number of new missions will come before us soon, either during the course of this session or soon thereafter. We urge the Secretariat to provide us, as soon as possible, with detailed information on the budgets for these new missions. This will help us all to make speedy and informed decisions.

Now I would like to raise some specific issues concerning peacekeeping.

We welcome the comprehensive reports on the overview of the financing of the United Nations peacekeeping operations. We wish, however, to reiterate our disappointment that a number of important reports on cross-cutting peacekeeping themes will be unavailable to us in our deliberations which will result in a less than comprehensive analysis of this important area of work. Our consideration of such important cross-cutting issues as training, IT and recruitment will, as a result, be far less thorough than we had hoped for at this session. We urge the ACABQ and Bureau to work together to expedite consideration of these reports at this session.

Concerning recruitment, the European Union wishes to highlight that this is an area where we want to discuss with DPKO their external candidature procedures, particularly their practices with respect to choosing internal versus external candidates. We also concur with the ACABQ that the average of 347 days for recruitment falls significantly short of the goal of 120 days. This vital issue has to be addressed.

We welcome the evolving results-based format of the proposed budgets for peacekeeping operations and recognize the good progress made in this regard since last year. However, the Board of Auditors and the ACABQ make important observations and recommendations concerning RBB that we endorse, including on the need to enhance the capability of existing financial systems to support results-based budgeting and on the importance of drafting expected accomplishments, indicators of achievement and planned outputs in a clear manner to facilitate objective measurement of progress made.

We agree with ACABQ that the Secretariat should develop a coherent, comprehensive and cost-effective policy on outsourcing services for peacekeeping missions rather than issuing many individual special service contracts or seeking the conversion of these contracts into actual posts.

Regarding the conversion of contracts of staff employed in peace-keeping missions from the 300 to the 100 series, the EU is concerned that such an important policy issue was not presented in a comprehensive way. We do not have enough information as yet to take a considered decision on how to proceed on this matter. We will be seeking more information on this issue from the Secretariat during informal negotiations.

The increasing complexity and multi-functionality of peacekeeping missions means that, more than ever, it is necessary for all the relevant parts of the Secretariat to closely coordinate and develop early integrated mission planning in order to ensure missions are run in the most efficient and effective manner. During negotiations we will be especially interested in hearing from the Secretariat about the interaction between DPKO and DPI in the context of peacekeeping missions. In particular, we would like to be provided with an overview from the Secretariat of the staffing of public information functions in the various missions.

We are aware that Security Council will be reviewing in the coming months the mandates of several missions in the context of their downsizing and that this could impact on their budgets. We stand ready to review, if necessary, the levels of funding for these missions.

We welcome the ACABQ's thorough evaluation of all the peacekeeping budgets and congratulate them on the revised format of their reports which are more user-friendly and informative of the reasons behind its decisions

The ACABQ has been very sparing in its cuts to the budgets of the various peacekeeping missions. However, like the ACABQ, we expect that further savings should be possible and we urge the management of the missions to exercise their responsibility accordingly. The European Union is especially concerned about the increases in travel and training. We trust that the Secretariat has used its lessons learned from recent complex missions to guard against over-budgeting.

We note the modest number of new posts which the ACABQ is recommending to add to the Support Account during this period of unprecedented increases in new missions. We are comforted by the assurances given to the ACABQ that account has been taken of the need to ensure capacity to absorb new and expanding missions during the period and to provide for "a rapid deployment capability". We intend to monitor closely the situation in the support account in the run-up to, and following, the establishment of new peacekeeping missions. This does not mean there is a rigid mathematical ratio between the two. However, the support account needs to demonstrate responsiveness to the level of field activity and it is essential that this be a salient feature of future peacekeeping support account budgets.

We also note that the Peacekeeping Best Practices Unit has begun to function at full strength. This should allow the Unit to move rapidly towards its expected accomplishment of increased efficiency and effectiveness in conducting, managing, directing and supporting peacekeeping.

We recall that the Fifth Committee last year decided that "any posts that remain vacant and any new posts that are not filled for twelve months from the date of their establishment would require re-justification in the subsequent budget submission". We are disappointed with the practical interpretation the Secretariat has made to this request and we trust that the guidance provided by the ACABQ in this area will be followed when the Secretary-General reports us at the fifty-ninth session on the implementation of this decision.

Turning to the Board of Auditors report, we are pleased that the Auditors were able to issue an unqualified opinion and that they found that the financial position of peacekeeping operations had remained fairly stable despite the level of outstanding contributions owed.

We are also pleased to note that the Board is ensuring the most advantageous use of audit resources by co-ordinating its work programme with other oversight bodies. In particular we single out the division of labour between the OIOS and the Board in the examination of different aspects of air operations.

The European Union has some questions about the findings of the Board of Auditors, especially concerning procurement, air operations and strategic deployment stocks which we will take up in informal negotiations. In particular, air operations comprise a significant amount of budgeted funds in many peacekeeping missions, therefore, we are encouraged that DPKO has put in place a new system, outlined in the overview report, which moves away, somewhat, from block booking and paying for unused hours. We look forward to an update on the implementation of the new system.

Regarding the Funds Monitoring Tool (FMT), the European Union shares the concern of the Board of Auditors and ACABQ that the new policy on allotments for peacekeeping missions does not yet appear to be working as smoothly and flexibly as had been hoped. With the additional training and enhancements to the FMT described by the Secretariat, we look forward to its effective utilization in the future.

The European Union, always aware of the crucial role of UNLB for the rapid deployment and support of peacekeeping operations, concurs with the observations and recommendations of ACABQ on this issue.

Concerning the financing of the strategic deployment stocks based at the Logistics Base at Brindisi, the timely replenishment of SDS reserves is an issue of great concern to us. We take note of the problems associated with its replenishment as highlighted by the Board of Auditors.

The European Union welcomes the suggestion of the ACABQ to enhance the role of the SDS Steering Group and its Finance Working Group in order to make it an effective and efficient tool in a coordinated approach to SDS.

We also look forward to hearing from the Office of Mission Support on work they are undertaking to refine and further develop policies to guide the management of the strategic deployment stocks.

On whether to transfer $11.047 million from the peacekeeping reserve fund to the support account, the European Union will consider this proposal in light of discussions on new missions.

Finally, we take this opportunity to reiterate once again the importance of Member States paying in full and on time to ensure that sufficient funds are in place for all peacekeeping missions.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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