Germany welcomes Albania’s initiative to discuss working methods and thanks the briefers for their insightful contributions. We align ourselves with the statement delivered by the EU and by Denmark on behalf of the Group of Friends on targeted sanctions.

Germany, during its last Security Council tenure in 2019/2020, attached great importance to fostering the transparency and accountability of the Security Council. We therefore welcome the increase of open and public debates. We encourage future Presidencies to continue along this line, and call on Security Council members to stop blocking certain topics, such as Myanmar, from being discussed publicly.

Time and again non-members of this Council are directly affected by the situation in countries that the Council discusses. These states have a legitimate interest in making their voice being heard. In line with paragraph 74 of note 507, which stipulates that the Security Council’s work is a collective endeavor, we believe that Presidencies should to the greatest possible extent give these countries the possibility to participate according to rule 37 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure. Artificially limiting the number of participants, as practiced by some Presidencies in the past, will seriously undermine the Council’s inclusivity and legitimacy.

During its last Security Council tenure, Germany tried to foster the participation of civil society briefers in Security Council debates. We welcome that it has become a best practice to invite civil society briefers to Council debates. Germany is very concerned that, in some recent cases, civil society briefers had to face threats after their statements in this Council. This is utterly unacceptable. We call on each UN Member State to allow civil society briefers to speak out openly in this Council, and to counter all forms of pressure on civil society briefers.

We also wish to increase this Council’s effectiveness and legitimacy by strengthening its co-operation with other UN bodies. We currently see the need to discuss threats to international peace and security and to agree on preventive measures and peace consolidation. For this reason, a clear and complementary division of labor between the Security Council and the Peacebuilding Commission will be key. For quite a while now Germany has pushed for a closer coordination and greater complementarity between both fora. We are happy to see that Kenia, as the current co-ordinator between the UNSC and the PBC, is actively working towards more coherence. This will ultimately strengthen the PBC’s advisory role to the Council. We will continue to support these efforts.

Finally, yet most importantly, the use of the veto remains the main reason why the Security Council does currently not live up to its tasks enshrined in the UN Charter. The blatant abuse of the veto thwarting a resolution on Ukraine in February again brought this to the fore. Such action has to stop. We were therefore proud to be a –co-sponsor of resolution A/76/L.52 and support initiatives to limit the use of the veto, such as the one by France and Mexico when the Security Council faces mass atrocities.