EU Presidency Statement - Peacekeeping Missions

Mr. Chairman,

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

Mr. Chairman,

First, let me thank Ms. Catherine Pollard and the chairman of the ACABQ for their clear and precise introduction of the reports before us.

The European Union has always attached great importance to peacekeeping as a core function of the Organisation. We will continue to be actively engaged in this function to ensure that UN peacekeeping missions are effective and serve the needs of maintaining peace throughout the world at a reasonable cost and with a clear end-state.

The European Union continues to support and participate in both UN peacekeeping missions and UN mandated missions with large numbers of troops, civilian police and other personnel from our Member States. As a regional organisation we play an active role in support of peacekeeping and other relevant activities throughout the world.

As the largest collective financial contributor to the UN peacekeeping budgets, we will closely examine the budgets before us to ensure adequate financing for the necessary tasks in the peacekeeping missions. Enhancement of the efficiency in the UN peacekeeping missions is important to the European Union.

To this end the European Union believes that the evolving Result Based Budgeting techniques are a great step forward and we have confidence that this tool will facilitate further efficiency in the missions and transparency in the budgeting process. We commend the Secretariat for this kind of improvement and we call on the Secretariat to continue this innovative approach.

The European Union attaches great importance to cross-cutting issues. Indeed, we were extremely disappointed that we were unable to agree a cross-cutting resolution in May due to lack of time and, once again, the late availability of documentation. We will, nevertheless, be returning to some of those issues in the context of the budgets now before us, and in a more comprehensive fashion in the future.

We are aware that the Security Council has reviewed the mandate for MONUC and stand ready to discuss a revised budget for this mission at short notice in order to ensure an adequate level of funding for this mission.

The documents before us were issued relatively late and we urge the Secretariat in the future to provide us with the budgets well in advance in order for us to take speedy and informed decisions.

The European Union commends the Secretariat for the use of integrated mission templates for establishing draft structures for new missions. However, the templates must be adjusted to meet the needs for each mission. We foresee a potential for overstaffing, risk for duplication of functions, potentially unclear line of reporting and the risk of having positions at too high levels if the templates are not used critically. The EU agrees with the ACABQ cautioning about duplication of functions in different units or a tendency to fragment functions into very specialised units where resources could be pooled or merged more efficiently.

Mr. Chairman,

The European Union supports the comments made by the ACABQ on UNMISET and MINUSTAH.

UNMISET

As for UNMISET the European Union urges the Secretariat to further utilise the RBB framework in order to facilitate improvements on budget forecasting, monitoring and presentation of indicators of achievements.

Regarding staffing for the executive direction and management we fully support the ACABQ comments on recruiting National Professionals and General Service staff instead of international staff to the extent possible, to facilitate national capacity building while the mission is downsizing.

The European Union fully supports the ACABQ comments on number and level of posts in the mission. A general downgrade of posts seems adequate giving the reduced size of the mission.

We believe that the sharp increase in unbudgeted travel costs in UNMISET should be avoided in the future and urge the Secretariat to improve budgeting techniques to more accurately forecast travel costs.

MINUSTAH

The European Union commends the secretariat for the use of RBB framework for this mission.

We are concerned of the effectiveness of several small units contra larger and more flexible units in the organisation of the mission. Further, the SRSG's office should not replicate functions from other offices in the mission. The European Union fully supports the ACABQ comments on the number of posts and recognises the requirements of this mission and the need for the SRSG to have staff at the appropriate level to perform the functions facing the mission.

The European Union understands that Hurricane Jeanne had significant effects on MINUSTAH, including damage to facilities and infrastructure. However, the recommendation from ACABQ to appropriate the full amount requested by the Secretary General in order to cope with the effects of the hurricane is unclear to us and we request further clarification before we take a position on this issue.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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