Recommendation to the Council on the 65th Session of the United Nations General Assembly

Pursuant to Rule 121(1) of the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament, Alexander Graf LAMBSDORFF (ALDE, DE) tabled a proposal for a recommendation to the Council on behalf of the ALDE group on the 65th Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

The draft recommendation recalls that EU foreign policy is based on strong and unequivocal support for effective multilateralism, as embodied in the United Nations Charter and that the European Union is a key political and financial partner for the UN. It stresses that the long-overdue reform of the UN Security Council has yet to be achieved.

Furthermore, it is underlined that the coordination of EU Member States’ positions within the United Nations should be improved following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty on 1 December 2009. This coordination requires closer cooperation between the new European External Action Service, the relevant Brussels-based Council working groups, the EU Delegation Office and the Member States’ Permanent Representations in New York.

Given that the Lisbon Treaty conferred legal personality upon the EU, a new development which will have major repercussions as regards the representation of the European Union at the UN, the following recommendations have been made to the Council:

Visibility of the European Union at the United Nations: the European Parliament

• calls for the Union’s political priorities for the next UN General Assembly session to be the subject of an in-depth, wide-ranging debate in Brussels and to be spelt out in a formal position of the Vice-President of the Commission/High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy;
• considers that this formal position should be regarded by the Permanent Representations in New York as a binding political platform to be used as a basis for negotiations with other countries;
• urges the Vice-President/High Representative to represent the Union at the United Nations.

The EU’s contribution to the reform of the United Nations: the European Parliament

• urges the Vice-President/High Representative to speak on behalf of all the Member States when addressing human rights issues, but also points out that it is important for each Member State to voice the EU’s position, in order to give it more weight;
• calls on the Vice-President/High Representative to build a more cohesive position among the Member States on the reform of the UN Security Council and to ask them for a clear mandate to advocate this position at the UN.