EU Statement – UN General Assembly: Presentation of the Rev.2 of the Declaration on Future Generations

I have the honour to speak on behalf of EU and its Member States.

The Candidate Countries North Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Georgia, as well as Andorra and Monaco align themselves with this statement.

Dear co-facilitators,

Almost 80 years ago, we committed to work for the benefit of succeeding generations, "to save them from the scourge of war." This is a quote from the very first sentence of the Charter of the United Nations

Today, with the Declaration on Future Generations, we have a golden opportunity to reconnect with and to re-embody this focus of our founders on the benefits of our work - on peace, on development, on human rights and humanity's future - for all future generations.

Integrating further this dimension into the work of the UN is both a moral and a strategic imperative. It is about building a legacy of sustainability, resilience, and equity that transcends our lifetimes. And it is about ensuring that the voices and perspectives of future generations are not only heard but actively integrated into our discussions, policies, and actions.

Dear Yoka, dear Brian, we want to express our deep appreciationfor the way you are conducting this negotiation. Through your leadership, we have now come up with a well-structured, clear, concise, and action-oriented text. With this Rev.2, we are much closer toreaching a balanced, ambitious, and consensual outcome. And we also want to commend the text's future-oriented vision,as we need more than ever to increase our ability to anticipate and to think ahead, relying on evidence-based decision-making.

Dear colleagues, I would like to focus on three points here where, in the EU's view, we should strive for further convergence:

• First, because we face multiplying and ever-more complex challenges, we need to develop and better integrate strategic foresight capacities in our decision-making processes. We must committo develop decision-making processes that are evidence-based and make the best use of science and data.This needs to be clearly reflected in the declaration.

• Second, to safeguard the needs and interests of future generations and tackle complex crises - such as the triple planetary crisis - we must work with all stakeholders, including civil society, the private sector, and academia. We welcome the emphasis on the need to take not only a whole-of-government approach, but also a whole-of-society approach,to start acting now. This must include the need to ensure the full, equal and meaningful participation of womenin decision-making. We must make this much clearer in the Declaration.

• Third, if our commitments to future generations remain only words, then they will end up meaning close to nothing. For the Declaration to be action-oriented and truly effective, we must agree on follow-up mechanisms. In our view, the appointment of a Special Envoy for Future Generationswould clearly help ensure that future-oriented thinking is integrated in all workflows of the UN System. We also support the revised proposal by the co-facilitators to review the implementation of this Declaration at a high-level meeting every 5 years. With the Special Envoy and a regular review through these high-level meetings, we will be able to constantly monitor, support the implementation, and make the necessary updates on our commitments for the benefit of future generations.

Dear co-facilitators, colleagues, now is the time to be faithful to a promise that is one of the United Nations' founding reasons of being. We have the vehicle, with the Declaration on Future Generations.

As we look ahead, let us commit ourselves on fostering a culture of intergenerational dialogue and solidarity within the UN and beyond. Let's be ambitious, let's be operational. And let's do so while fully embracing and reflecting another founding UN principle: the unbreakable interrelatedness between the UN's three founding pillars -- peace, development, and human rights -- not just for our benefit, but for the benefit of generations to come.

The European Union is fully committed to constructively engage in these discussions and to achieve successful and ambitious outcomes for all three inter-related processes - the Pact for the Future, the Digital Compact and the Declaration on Future Generations./.

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