Speech by President Charles Michel at the UN Summit of the Future

 

Press material Sunday, 22 September 2024

● European Council   22/09/2024 21:12 | Speech | Speech by President Charles Michel at the UN Summit of the Future   ‘The health and strength of a community depend on every citizen’s willingness to shoulder his part of the burdens and responsibilities of the community.’ These are the memorable words of former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld. That is why each of us is here today: to do our part, and to share the responsibilities. Finding the best way to tackle our common challenges is the shared mission of our generation.  This summit is a unique moment to boost our ambition. And the European Union is fully on board. We want a Pact for the Future that reinvigorates multilateral trust and puts the United Nations back at the heart of our actions. This Pact is a powerful catalyst to speed up our Sustainable Development Goals and to make progress on human rights, gender equality, and protecting our planet.  We must urgently reform our international financial architecture. We have already fulfilled our commitment to rechannel $100 billion of Special Drawing Rights to developing countries. And the EU has taken a leading role, but this is not enough. We must do more. We should strive to rechannel more SDRs — up to 40% of the SDR allocation. We must also fulfil our past commitments. The EU together with our member states are frontrunners in global development financing. In 2023, ODA from the EU reached 0.57% of our GNI — more than $100 billion. We encourage other partners, including in the G7, to follow our example. If all G7 partners matched our ambition, it would generate $100 billion more every year. We also need to make our international financial architecture more effective — and more inclusive. Developing countries need more money, private and public money, now. We must also tackle the problem of debt because we cannot accept that low- and middle-income countries must choose between fighting poverty and fighting climate change. They must do both, and we must support them. Just one example: last year some middle-income countries had to pay six times more on average than a country like Germany for interest payments on public debt, when measured as a share of public debt. The G20 common framework is a good tool, but we must work with partners to make it more efficient, more transparent, and more timely.  I would like to thank you, dear António Guterres, for your leadership, and I would like to thank all the negotiators and co-facilitators for their work in making this Pact for the Future a reality. 193 countries have signed up to the Pact.  Developing countries, together with the EU, we have tried to play a particularly positive role in helping reach consensus among all nations of the world. This signals a path for future cooperation — for the benefit of multilateralism and humanity. Diversity, tolerance and mutual respect. This Pact for the Future sends a powerful signal of confidence that despite our differences, despite the challenges we face, we can work together, and we want to work together. You can count on the EU to be a strong and reliable partner in making this Pact a success.