Summary: EU Presidency Statement - Pattern of Conferences (2 November 2005: New York)
EU Presidency Statement on Item 127: Pattern of Conferences by the Permanent Mission of the United Kingdom to the United Nations on behalf of the European Union, Fifth Committee, United Nations, New York
I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union. The Acceding Countries Bulgaria and Romania, the Candidate Countries Turkey and Croatia*, the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, members of the European Economic Area, as well as the Republic of Moldova align themselves with this declaration.
We would like to thank Mr Chen Jian, the Under-Secretary General for General Assembly and Conference Management, and Mr Rajat Saha, the Acting Chair of the ACABQ, for introducing their respective reports. We would also like to offer our congratulations to Ms Angela Kane on her new appointment, and thank her for her efforts in taking forward reform of conference management during her tenure.
Mr Chairman
The provision of effective conference services, through the timely issuance of documentation, high standards of interpretation and translation, adequate meeting facilities, and respect for the equality of all official languages, is instrumental to the success of the work of the inter-governmental organs and expert bodies of the United Nations. At the same time, the resources required represent a substantial share of the Regular Budget. It is for all these reasons that the European Union places
great value on the principles of effectiveness, efficiency and quality of conference services.
Allow us also to thank the Chairman of the Committee on Conferences for his efforts and for introducing the report of the Committee. While noting the contents of the report, we regret that the Committee was unable to make any substantive recommendations. We share Mr Chen's regret that it could not agree a draft resolution for transmission to the 5th Committee. We had found this useful in previous years in guiding our work. What we find deeply regrettable is that the body tasked with reviewing
conference management and reform was itself unable to finish its work on time. The EU considers that the way in which conference management is dealt with by the General Assembly must be much more efficient and policy orientated, a point highlighted by Mr Chen in his statement yesterday.
Turning to reform, Mr Chairman, the EU supports fully the ongoing reform measures such as integrated management of conference services, e-meets and e-docs. We encourage the Department of General Assembly and Conference Management (DGACM) to pro-actively take forward these reforms and to seek out additional reform measures that they can institute. We welcome the benefits already derived from the reforms and expect visible additional benefits to emerge in the short-term, flowing directly from the
increased use of modern IT.
While welcoming the reform process, the European Union is disappointed that the report of the SG does not comprehensively address all the options for the delivery of summary records, together with their practical and financial implications, as mandated in para 14 of Resolution 59/265. Information is, in particular, missing on the possible digitalisation of summary records with full respect for the principles of multi-lingualism. We question why? And we must also express our surprise that the
enormous advances in Information Technology since the 1970s, from when the current workload standards date, have failed to impact on the work of translators. Indeed, A/60/93 seems to infer that advances in IT have made the job of translators more difficult. We expect the DGACM to present a more reliable method for assessing workload standards rather than perhaps presenting more "management data" in the form of a "balanced scorecard" as suggested. We would be interested to know what benchmarking
exercises with outside professional companies have been carried out recently to ensure the continued relevance of decades-old workload indicators.
On the question of meetings of regional and other major groupings of Member States, the EU takes note of the proposals put forward by the SG. The current system of providing meetings on an ad-hoc basis in accordance with established practice has worked well in providing for a consistently high percentage of meeting requests to be serviced. As such, we support the retention of the current practice.
Mr Chairman
As we have already mentioned, the timely issuance of documentation is vital to the effective running of the inter-governmental process. In this respect we support the slotting system as a tool to allow more accurate forecasting of when documents will be submitted and issued. However, while in theory the system is good, in practice it is being undermined by late input from author departments. This Committee should consider alternative ways of addressing this, such as reducing the 6-week issuance
rule to 4 weeks for a pilot study as suggested by Mr Chen yesterday. But whatever decision we do eventually take on this issue, we consider that programme managers must be held more accountable for their departments submitting documents on time.
Thank you Mr Chairman.
* Croatia continues to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.
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