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European Parliament recommendation to the Council on the EU priorities for the 64th Session of the UN General Assembly

2009/2000(INI)

The European Parliament adopted by 521 votes to 38, with 67 abstentions, a resolution addressing a series of recommendations to the Council on the EU priorities for the 64th Session of the UN General Assembly.

Parliament asks the Union to present itself within the United Nations system as an honest broker between the interests and values of different membership groups in order to promote common understanding and greater cohesion around the three closely interconnected pillars on which the UN rests, namely peace and security, economic and social development and human rights.

Parliament recommends that the Council take the following approach as regards the following issues:

  • Peace and security: Parliament asks for the Council to foster the debate initiated by the UN Secretary-General about the implementation of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle. Parliament also encourages the African Union to further develop its crisis management capabilities, and calls on both EU and UN actors to support these efforts and to deepen the cooperation with the African Union in the establishment of peace and security on the African continent. It urges the EU Member States to make the necessary efforts so that the negotiations on the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism can be concluded.
  • Human rights: Parliament calls on the Council to uphold clearly in all resolutions debated and adopted in the UNGA the tenets of international humanitarian law and condemn unequivocally any violation thereof, especially regarding the safety and security of UN and other humanitarian workers. Parliament calls on the UN Secretary-General to report to the UNGA’s 65th session about Member States’ compliance with the ban on the death penalty for juveniles and to include in his report information on the number of juvenile offenders currently sentenced to death and the number executed during the last five years. It calls on the Council to promote and support efforts towards ensuring that the United Nations terrorism-related sanctions regime is subject to transparent and equitable procedures, particularly by introducing an effective notification procedure and by establishing an independent judicial review, in line with the case-law of the European Court of Justice. It urges the Security Council and its Counter-Terrorism Committee to cooperate with the relevant UN human rights bodies, in order to monitor continuously compliance with obligations under international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law. Once again, Parliament insists that all UN members ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
  • Environment: Parliament encourages the debate on the forthcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen in order to build consensus on and momentum behind the adoption of a new international agreement on climate change for the period post-2012. It proposes that, in this context, support should be rallied for a financial and technological package targeted at developing countries in order to facilitate their endorsement of a new binding agreement. Parliament also endorses the adoption by the next UNGA of a more coherent structure for global environmental governance.
  • Global governance: Parliament considers that it is necessary to use the upcoming intergovernmental negotiations on the reform of the Security Council as an opportunity to focus on points of convergence and achieve tangible progress regarding the clarification of the Security Council's competences in relation to other UN bodies, the addition of new permanent and non-permanent members – possibly on a temporary basis – so as to improve the Security Council's representativeness and legitimacy, and the review of working methods of the Security Council.  It emphasises that an EU seat in the Security Council remains the long-term goal of the European Union.
  • Non-proliferation and disarmament: Parliament calls on the Council to promote conditions for a successful 2010 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT), notably by endorsing and promoting the proposed Model Nuclear Weapons Convention. It also calls on it to achieve consensus around the proposed Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. It should also engage multilaterally and bilaterally with UN Member States in order to relaunch the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
  • Management reform: Parliament requests that full use of its financial leverage in the UN should be made in order to ensure that the budget for 2010-2011 better addresses the pressing operational needs of that organisation. It calls for a clear link to be established between better representation within the different UN bodies and a fairer sharing of the financial burden.
  • Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): Parliament considers that the Union should exercise global leadership in galvanising international action to deliver on the MDG pledges in view of the growing evidence that the world is falling far short of the promises made in relation to the MDGs. It advocates, in tandem with all these initiatives, signing up to the principles enshrined in the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness, and to the Accra Agenda for Action, in order to improve the quality and delivery of aid. It uses the occasion of the 64th UNGA to report on the progress made towards meeting the benchmarks set out in the EU Agenda for Action on MDGs. Overall, recalling that the value of existing EU aid commitments will fall by nearly USD 12 billion a year (because they are expressed as a percentage of Member States' GDP), Parliament encourages other donors to deliver more of their aid on a long-term, predictable basis in the form of budget support.

Recalling that the European Union indicated, in its Statement to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) of 19 September 2008, that the following four elements of the outcome document for the Durban Review Conference would be unacceptable (the so-called EU "red lines"): (1) singling out one region of the world in particular; (2) reopening the 2001 Durban declaration by inserting a prohibition against "defamation of religion", designed to restrict free speech and impose the censorship inherent in Islamic anti-blasphemy laws; (3) drawing up an order of priority among victims; and (4) politicising or polarising the discussion, the European Parliament calls on Member States to reconsider their participation in the Durban Review Conference in Geneva in April 2009 if the breach of all four "red lines" is confirmed in subsequent negotiations leading up to the Conference.

Lastly, Parliament urges the Member States to follow up on their commitment to effective multilateralism by ensuring the systematic and swift ratification of all UN conventions and treaties.