UNCTAD
COMMISSION ON ENTERPRISE, BUSINESS FACILITATION AND DEVELOPMENT
GENEVA, 4- 5 FEBRUARY 2008
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OPENING STATEMENT
ON BEHALF OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
BY MARTINA LODRANT,
THIRD SECRETARY,
PERMANENT MISSION OF SLOVENIA
GENEVA, 4 FEBRUARY 2008
Check against delivery
Chairman,
Colleagues,
I.
Introductory And General Remarks
I have the honour to take the floor on behalf of the European Union. The Candidate
Countries Turkey, Croatia* and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia1, the
Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Albania,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, as well as Georgia align themselves with
this declaration.
I congratulate you, Mr Chairman, as well as the members of the Bureau on your election.
I wish you success in carrying out your responsibilities and assure you of the full support
and active participation of the European Union in this session. We trust that our collective
efforts will result in substantive discussions that will also inform the ongoing UNCTAD XII
PrepCom process.
We see as the main objective of this year's Commission sessions the stocktaking and
assessment of the work accomplished under the auspices of each of them not only over
the last year but in the four years since the last ministerial conference. In addition, it is
an opportunity for an in-depth exchange of views on some key themes of direct
relevance to UNCTAD XII. In the case of this particular session, we are looking forward to
a discussion on the subject of transport, logistics and global value chains.
The EU would like to stress that, in view of the upcoming Conference the aim of which is
to set the mandate and programme of work of this organization for the next four years,
we should not endeavour to negotiate any forward-looking conclusions on the work of
UNCTAD and on future expert meetings as this would amount to prejudging the outcome
of the Conference. To the extent that new insights will emerge from the discussion, and
we hope they will, members should, as appropriate, bring them into the UNCTAD XII
Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia continue to be part of the
Stabilisation and Association Process.
1
PrepCom process that will resume immediately after we conclude all sessions of the three
Commissions.
II.
Item 3: Transport, Logistics and global value chains
Mr Chairman,
With respect to agenda item 3, let me first welcome the interdivisional cooperation within
the secretariat in the important work on trade logistics and the integration of SMEs into
the global value chains. SMEs are key generators of employment growth. Their
competitiveness and ability to participate in international production systems depend on
the existence of an enabling business environment of which adequate infrastructure,
trade facilitation and efficient trade and transport-related services are all critical
components.
The EU agrees that there are formidable challenges that SMEs in some developing
countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and in developing land-locked countries, face
in this regard and they are well described in the background note of the secretariat for
this session (TD/B/COM.3/84). It is important to stress that the imperative to improve
the enabling environment in its institutional, legal and administrative dimension, implies
first and foremost a national responsibility for these countries themselves. We fully
concur with the report on the importance of ensuring as basic conditions predictability,
accountability and reliability for traders and investors. In the area of trade logistics, we
welcome the report's recognition of the substantial potential for trading cost reduction
from trade facilitation but at the same time note with some disappointment that the
ongoing negotiations on trade facilitation in the WTO have not been mentioned in the
policy response section. In this regard the EU encourages UNCTAD to continue to play an
active role in the collective effort with other international organisations mentioned in the
Trade Facilitation Negotiating Modalities in Annex D of the WTO General Council Decision
of 1 August 2004 to fulfil the mandate to make technical assistance and capacity building
more effective and operational. As regards infrastructure development, it is important to
continue to study the potential and modalities for greater private sector participation in
its financing. We look forward to the World Investment Report 2008 on the topic of FDI in
infrastructure. Under policy responses, we would also stress the potential for gains in
terms of trade performance from services liberalization in sectors such as transport,
logistics, construction, financial services and telecommunications.
The EU, for its part, is engaging on a number of fronts to assist national efforts of
developing countries in trade logistics areas. As part of our development cooperation we
have been running many trade facilitation technical assistance programmes and we are
committed to do more, particularly, as demanded by many developing countries, with a
view to the successful implementation of a new set of WTO provisions in this area and
the trade facilitation chapters in the Economic Partnership Agreements with the ACP
countries. The EU has undertaken ambitious commitments on Aid for Trade, promising to
increase the collective volumes of such assistance to €2 billion by 2010. It adopted its
Aid-for-Trade Strategy in October 2007 and we are currently preparing the solutions
regarding its operationalization. Trade regulation and trade facilitation measures will be
one of the major focuses in this framework including regional as well as country-tocountry approaches. With its African counterparts, the EU has also established a
Partnership for African Infrastructure which features such innovative financial
instruments as the EU-Africa Infrastructure Trust Fund, subsidizing loans for investments
promoting interconnections at the regional and continent-wide levels in the
transportation, water, energy, information technology and communications sectors.
III.
Item 4: Reports of expert meetings
a) Expert meeting on regional cooperation in transit transport: solutions for
landlocked and transit developing countries
Mr Chairman,
regarding agenda item 4 we have read with interest the report of the expert meeting on
regional cooperation in transit transport (TD/B/COM.3/EM.30/3). The EU welcomes the
attention given by UNCTAD to identifying cooperative solutions to the specific trade
disadvantages of landlocked developing countries which also take due account of the
interests of transit countries and create win-win situations. We strongly support the
conclusion that regional, bilateral and local transit arrangements should as much as
possible build on the multilateral framework. The meeting also produced a number of
other useful points for consideration in the design of new schemes, or in the reform of
existing ones, to make them compatible with the most widely accepted standards and
best practices in transit transport operations. Let me also take this opportunity to say
that the EU is looking forward to the mid-term review of the Almaty Programme of Action
which should shed light on the present situation and define specific future actions and
measures aimed at further improvement of cooperation between landlocked and transit
developing countries.
b) Expert
meeting
on
increasing
the
participation
of
developing
countries' SMEs into global value chains
The EU also welcomes the report of the experts meeting on increasing the participation of
developing countries' SMEs into global value chains (TD/B/COM.3/EM.31/3). The case
studies by UNCTAD and OECD enabled a very practical discussion and a number of policy
conclusions that deserve further attention and examination. We would be interested in
more analysis, including from UNCTAD, on how SMEs operating in the informal sector can
be formalized. The EU also shares the experts' opinion that the situation of women
entrepreneurs in African business environment requires special attention. In this context,
the EU especially welcomes the initiatives focused on assisting women-owned enterprises
to access business development services, such as the entrepreneurship training services
provided by EMPRETEC.
IV.
Item 5: Implementation of the recommendations of the Commission,
including an assessment of the work of the Commission, since
UNCTAD XI
Mr Chairman,
under the final substantive item let me first thank the secretariat for the progress report
on the implementation of agreed conclusions of the previous Commission session and the
assessment of the work under this Commission since UNCTAD XI (TD/B/COM.3/85). We
see this report and the discussion on it as important basis for further refining our
positions for UNCTAD XII, both with respect to the future work programme for UNCTAD
as well as the institutional dimension, particularly the role of Commissions.
While it is clear from the report that a large number of diverse activities have been
undertaken based on the Sấo Paulo Consensus and subsequent Commission
recommendations, we would have liked it to provide more in terms of assessment of the
quality of their outputs and the extent to which these outputs translated into impacts. We
invite the secretariat to gear its oral presentation to the Commission towards these
aspects. We would also like to hear about any particular difficulties encountered in
discharging the mandates given by the last Conference and elaborated by this
Commission as well as on the inter-divisional cooperation and cooperation with outside
organizations and actors in this regard. We also have some more specific questions which
I will put to the secretariat during the discussion of this item, provided they will not have
been answered by the secretariat's oral report.
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Mr Chairman,
this concludes my initial statement. I look forward to interactive discussions under the
agenda items of this session. On behalf of the EU, I will join them with further inputs, in
an interactive manner. Thank you for your attention.