EU Statement - ECOSOC Operational Activities Segment: Dialogue with Host Governments, RCs and UNCTs

EU Statement - ECOSOC Operational Activities Segment: Dialogue with Host Governments, RCs and UNCTs

3 June 2026, New York - Statement on behalf of the European Union and its Member States by Renaud Savignat, ECOSOC Ambassador, Delegation of the European Union to the United Nations, at the ECOSOC Operational Activities Segment Dialogue with Host Governments, RCs and UNCTs: Tailoring support for countries across the system and supporting delivery

Check against delivery

Chair, Excellencies, colleagues,

I have the honour to deliver this statement on behalf of the EU and its Member States.

Glad to see several resident coordinators in the room - they are the backbone of the UNDS on the ground and OAS is fully meaningful only with their participation.

The question before us is simple: How do we ensure the UN's presence on the ground is as agile, coherent, and impactful as the challenges we face? The answer lies in three shifts-from fragmentation to unity, from rigidity to adaptability, and from global processes to country-owned results.

First, for this to happen, Cooperation Frameworks (CFs) must become the strategic anchor of the UN Country Teams. We've seen how CFs can align UN teams behind national priorities-but only when they are treated as mandatory, not optional. Critically, entity country program documents must be derived from and aligned with the CF, not the other way around. RCs need to be empowered to reconfigure teams on the basis of the CF and national priorities, ensuring the UN delivers as one coherent system in support of country-owned development goals.

Second, delivering better results requires better access to expertise as well as leaner operations. the EU has backed models like the Expertise-on-Demand Mechanism and regional rosters because they work - for example, the climate advisors working across the Caribbean. But this only succeeds if RCs can access expertise without bureaucratic delays, and if entities are rewarded for sharing capacity, not hoarding it. Beyond expertise, operational efficiency must improve. The EU strongly supports reducing duplication and streamlining operations through strengthened shared service delivery. Too many resources are lost to parallel administrative structures. Consolidating these functions frees up capacity for actual development results.

Third, the EU strongly supports a fundamental shift in how UNCT configuration decisions are made. UNCTs must be purpose-built to respond to national priorities and tailored to national contexts. UN entities should maintain an in-country presence only where they demonstrably add value. This means that decisions on in-country presence and UNCT membership must no longer rest solely with individual UN entities and host governments. The RC must have a formal seat at that table: configuration decisions should be taken jointly by the UN entity, the host government, and the RC.

Executive boards will have an important role to play in reconfiguration of UN Country Teams, especially when moving from fragmentation to unity. They would need to enforce CF alignment-because voluntary compliance has not worked so far.

In conclusion, the EU supports the objective of a stronger, more focused UN, with country teams reconfigured around national SDG priorities, drawing on the full system's expertise available on demand. In this regard, the EU strongly supports a clear roadmap that turns UNCT reconfiguration into concrete, context-specific action-driven by data and coordination.

What would a realistic implementation plan look like, one that translates Cooperation Frameworks into tailored UNCT configurations-not just on paper, but in practice?

Thank you.