Mr President, colleagues,

It is an honor to join you today in this commemoration and to take the floor. I would like to thank the panelists for their thought-provoking contributions this morning. I would like to refer to a couple of their points, while of course aligning with the EU statement.

The challenges that are before us are intensifying. We all know this: climate change, loss of biodiversity, inequality, and global health crises. They are more urgent than ever. So we need to work on them.

And the ECOSOC has been a vital platform and has played a pivotal role in advancing sustainable development and economic progress, and it must remain so.

But it needs reform, and we need to think about it. And we need to think about it to make it able to steer better, as was said this morning.

Part of having it steer better is including multi-stakeholder partnerships. Intensifying partnerships. Strengthening partnerships. With the private sector, civil society, academia, people on the ground involved with government work because that is where the work is being done.

I want to assure you that Germany is fully committed to the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. And we’re proud of the contributions we are making at home and around the world with partners, groups of countries and individual Member States.

And I want to underline that Germany will step up and continue to deepen our work – and that is in word and in deed on the ground.

Thank you so much – we need working together to turn the vision of a just, inclusive, and sustainable world into reality.