Summary: EU Presidency Statement - Peacebuilding Commission (6 December 2005: New York)
UK Statement on Behalf of the European Union by H.E. Sir Emyr Jones Parry, Permanent Representative United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations at the UN General Assembly Informal Consultations of the Plenary on the Peacebuilding Commission, New York
I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union. The Acceding Countries Bulgaria and Romania, the Candidate Country Turkey, the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, EFTA countries Iceland and Liechtenstein, members of the European Economic Area, as well as Ukraine, align themselves with this declaration.
Mr President, the European Union wants to commend and thank you for the tireless efforts of you and your Co-Chairs to bring us to a successful conclusion on the matter of the Peacebuilding Commission. Your consultations have been transparent and comprehensive. You have sought to stimulate debate, develop options on the outstanding issues, and to steer a course that, we believe, has the potential to achieve success by the end of the year, as our leaders agreed at the Summit in September.
Mr President, the fruits of this work can be seen in the draft resolution that you circulated to the membership on 18 November. The European Union believes that you have produced a positive, constructive and balanced text.
Perhaps most importantly, we note you have given us a field-orientated text - focused on making a difference on the ground. This is what will make the Peacebuilding Commission effective - what will really count. We believe the draft resolution is an excellent basis on which to pursue and complete our work.
The European Union is already in a position to offer broad support for the draft resolution that you have produced. We hope that other groups and states will be able to do likewise.
Your draft resolution in large measure responds to objectives and positions supported by the EU. Understandably, given the range of opinions you had to address, we find that not all the European Union's detailed positions have been met in full in the draft. It would have been unrealistic to expect that to be the case. However, we feel strongly that if the Peacebuilding Commission is to begin its work by 31 December, we must all now work towards a compromise.
Your draft resolution is a well-balanced attempt to find that middle ground. We do not think it helpful at this late stage in the process for member states to propose large swathes of amendments. For our part, we recognise that, for any final agreement to succeed there must be readiness to compromise on all sides and balances must be struck.
You asked us in your letter of 5 December to focus on two main issues: interaction and membership of the Organisational Committee. You also asked us not to deliver prepared statements or to repeat previous positions.
I can oblige on the latter point by referring you to the EU statements of 21 October and 2 November, which covered our common positions on these issues.
On the former point, I will confine myself to saying that, on interaction, as we said on 2 November, we believe that the Peacebuilding Commission should be the object of concurrent resolutions of the General Assembly and Security Council, as you have proposed. We believe that the roles of ECOSOC, the Security Council and the General Assembly should be set out, as we argued in our statement of 2 November. We noted then that we see a central role for the Security Council. And we set out in detail
how we see the role of ECOSOC, given the vital importance of post-conflict peacebuilding being underpinned by sustained attention and activity in the economic, social and environmental fields. We support your proposal for an annual debate in the General Assembly on the Peacebuilding Commission annual report to the General Assembly.
On the Organisational Committee, you will inevitably hear a range of views. It is your role, which you are performing excellently, to identify the points of consensus. The EU, in its contribution to the debate here on 2 November, set out some general principles. Our over-riding interest remains an effective Commission, which can begin its much-needed work as soon as possible.
We look forward to continuing to work with you on further improvements as you pursue your efforts. We remain convinced we can meet and beat the deadline of 31 December which our leaders set us, given the excellent work you have done with this draft resolution to date and provided we stick with the framework established and agreed by our leaders in the Summit outcome document.
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