European Union is one of the most powerful political groups at the UN. The 27 EU member states comprise more than one-eighth of all votes in the UN General Assembly and EU member and candidate countries account for one-third of the UN Security Council’s current membership, not to mention the significant financial contribution to the UN system. The EU Member States meet regularly - every morning in this period of the year, to coordinate their positions on various issues and resolutions.
The reason I’m writing this is to give you a broad perspective on the way things work around here. In order to have a proposal passed by the General Assembly it is best to pass it first through the European Union coordination meetings, in order to have a stronger voice and our proposals to be supported by all the 27 member states and the candidate countries for the EU. However, all the EU member states have similar views in general over development and the steps that need to be taken for solving global issues, so our work is basically reduced to coordinating our efforts than to negotiating our proposals.
Yesterday I took part at a very interesting side-event with the topic focused on the death penalty and the UN’s last year’s resolution with the recommendation to the member states to abolish this form of punishment for all types of crime. In the panel of speakers we had the opportunity to listen the testimonials of 3 ex-judges and prosecutors from Japan and United States that are responsible for the prosecution and execution of more than one person, and that are now conducting a large scale campaign against this form of punishment, because in their experience it seems that many mistakes have been made and many innocent people have died.
Sometimes there are debates and sensitive topics even among member states. I remember most delicate issues from this perspective were women’s rights (and sexual reproductive issues in general), as well as the secret detention centers (but that was probably just a special context).