Thank you very much, Co-Chairs,

First of all I would like to thank USG Guy Ryder and his team for their substantial contributions, not only today, but for the duration of this long process.

Co-Chairs, thank you very much for your leadership and for guiding us through the discovery phase of this working group. At least for me and my delegation I can assure you: we have learnt a lot and we are grateful. Let me also thank all briefers who have made such valuable contributions.

Building on what we learnt in our last session about Mandate Review Mechanisms, I would like to make two points in addition to of course, the EU statement that we align with:

Firstly, I think it is clear that we need to have better mandate review mechanisms across UN system and all organs. The briefing session has also shown that there are already very good examples in the UN system we can learn from. Even though there may not be a one-fits-all-solution. Depending on the substance of the Mandate we will need to define clear and objective criteria for its review. In that sense, of looking at examples, we thought the presentation by UNEP was particularly encouraging: The technical note by the secretariat that is being submitted for every draft resolution contains – among other very relevant information – clear indicators to measure the impact of the new mandate. And that could be very, very helpful. And this technical note UNEP for draft resolutions is also quite a good orientation for a structure of the Mandatory Mandate Landscape briefing, which Germany suggested when discussing Mandate Creation a couple of weeks ago.

Secondly, we also discussed the retirement of Mandates in our last session. Part of the debate has to be, in our view, introducing more sunset clauses. Because we need to reduce the number of recurring mandates. The Security Council usually foresees clear end-dates in its mandates. The GA-mandates, by our count and by other people’s count, only 14 % have instructions on review or termination. In our view, we should aim at increasing this number significantly. This could be done by establishing a “Mandatory Mandate Lifecycle Paragraph” for new and renewed mandates. And then, every resolution would then have to contain a section which clearly defines the intended future of the mandate. However, and I would like to stress this, Member States would still be free in deciding whether that means a time-bound sunset clause, measurable goals, a regular review cycle, or something of that nature. But review is in our view very important.

Co-Chairs, let me again thank you for your leadership. We are really looking forward to your summary of the discovery phase and to the next phase of the working group.

I thank you.