Excellencies, Ladies and
Gentlemen,
On behalf of the UNECE,
as one of the two international organisations
that represent EU Member States, Central,
Eastern and South European States, Caucasus
and Central Asia, and the USA and Canada,
I would like to thank the organisers for
this opportunity to participate in this
CEI Summit and to address you.
The Central European Initiative
is making a remarkable contribution to stability
and prosperity in Europe through dialogue
and cooperation projects. The UNECE recognizes
the efforts made by the CEI Member State
Governments to achieve these objectives
within a framework of economic and social
development, and common security in the
Region.
Today, we are facing new
challenges and opportunities in the European
region, with the political map due to be
redrawn once again after EU enlargement.
As we have underlined today many times,
five of the existing CEI members will join
the two others, Austria and Italy, in the
European Union in May 2004. Another two,
Romania and Bulgaria, will access the EU
in 2007 and Croatia, very likely, one year
later. Could anyone have predicted this
remarkable achievement fifteen years ago?
Prospects of EU accession for other SEE
countries in the framework of the Stabilization
and Association Process starting in 1999,
was recently strengthened at the Thessaloniki
Summit with the new Partnership Initiative.
This enlargement will create
particular challenges and new opportunities
for the new neighbouring countries. The
European Council in Thessaloniki endorsed
the European Commission's new neighbourhood
policy or a Wider Europe policy which includes
among others three CEI members. The EC defined
new neighbourhood instruments which will
assist new neighbours to further develop
the economic and political relations with
the EU. UNECE sees the integration process
within the context of EU enlargement, SAP
and a Wider Europe as a building block for
the future of a stable, prosperous and secure
broader Europe. The progress achieved is
very much welcomed by the United Nations
and in particular by UNECE whose mandate
assigned to it in 1947 is to promote economic
cooperation within the UNECE Region.
At the CEI Summit in 2002,
you discussed the future of CEI and the
impact of EU enlargement on its work. The
benefits of regional lateralism for strengthening
democracy and prosperity are increasingly
recognised. The CEI is a good example of
regional cooperation within the UNECE region.
UNECE will continue to provide its support
to your activities through our normative
work, policy recommendations and technical
assistance. I would like to reiterate UNECE
commitments to cooperate more intensively
with Western Balkan and CIS countries among
the CEI members.
To focus attention on the
opportunities that enlargement brings, UNECE
has launched a "Wider Europe" programme
focusing on the impact of EU enlargement
on energy, trade, transport and environment,
providing an opportunity for member States,
the business community, civil society and
academic institutions to come together to
look "beyond enlargement" and assess how
economic cooperation could be strengthened
in an enlarged Europe, the Western Balkans,
Caucasus and Central Asia included.
In 2002 in Johannesburg
at the WSSD, governments made strong commitments
to seek intergenerational solidarity and
therefore to mobilize their national efforts
and enhance international cooperation to
achieve the objectives of sustainable development.
I would like to use this opportunity to
raise further your awareness of the need
to work together towards the agreed targets.
May I invite your governments to participate
in the first Regional Implementation Forum
on Sustainable Development in Geneva in
January 2004.
The EU Lisbon Strategy
set a target to make the EU the most competitive
part of the world by 2010 which will benefit
from knowledge-based economy. Competitiveness
and growth in the twenty-first century is
greatly dependent on progress achieved in
building a knowledge-based economy and information
society.
I therefore invite all
the CEI countries to pay special attention
to the Information and Communication Technologies
and to the work of WSIS, the first part
of which will take place in Geneva in December
this year. The Information Society is becoming
a major UNECE focus. The new technological
developments require an impartial definition
of the regulatory framework and an institutional
guidance to allow broader use and benefit
of these technologies among all parts of
society.
In this context, the UNECE
has a particular responsibility to support
transition economies to adopt the bold economic
and social reforms needed to bridge the
digital gap and build a knowledge-based
economy, which has become an engine of growth
in developed market economies.
UNECE is working in this
direction as part of the global UN process
for ICT and also related to the preparation
of the World Summit on Information Society
(WSIS). We at the UNECE believe that we
are in a strong position to contribute to
ICT for development and provide assistance
to Governments in developing national strategies
and goals for the Information Society.
Excellencies, UNECE is
convinced that working together at the regional
level is a source of innovation and progress
in both institutions and standards. Regional
and sub-regional integration can lead to
the adoption of programmes and action plans
to establish a set of guiding principles
and commitments specific to the region and
contribute to the development of global
programmes.
The UNECE is ready to cooperate
with the CEI and tackle the challenges of
sustainable development and the information
society, to gain advantage from the related
opportunities that are arising in the CEI
Member States with EU enlargement, but also
to reduce risks of possible threats and
new socio-economic gaps in the region.
I see the role of UNECE
becoming even more relevant in the coming
years, especially in relation to the twin
trend of globalization and regional integration,
offering as it does an open and accessible
platform to all its member States for economic
integration within the framework of a wider
Europe, but at the same time within the
closer European and transatlantic cooperation.
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