Draft EU Statement on Session on "Regional support to national action"
"How can action at the regional level accelerate national implementation and facilitate review of progress"
The EU and its Member States see the regional level as an essential component of the follow and review process. It is an opportunity for peer review and learning, exchange of best practices contributing to a global monitoring review, while providing a useful feedback to the national level.
As we stressed on several occasions, accountability needs to be pursued first and foremost at national level. We consider national ownership and accountability as key elements of the post-2015 agenda. Through their national action plans, sustainable development strategies or other relevant frameworks, countries should set out their level of ambition and the measures that will be taken to achieve concrete results. All countries should thus be able to report on progress on all aspects of the post-2015 agenda.
This must be carried out through an inclusive and participatory system with involvement of all concerned stakeholders, including national parliaments, national and local governments, civil society, science and academia, as well as business actors. These reports should be publically available, inform on implementation activities and results and follow as far as possible a standardised format to ensure consistency and facilitate feedback into the regional and global levels.
The national reports can form the basis for peer reviews at regional level, together with other relevant information and analysis. The aim would be to encourage ambitious national action and to stimulate progress by fostering exchange of best practices and good examples of successful implementation, identify obstacles and lessons learned, etc. Reviews at regional level can also identify regional trends and priorities, help tracking of progress on transboundary issues and shared targets, stimulate cooperation at regional level.
It is essential that the regional process involves all stakeholders - civil society, relevant international and regional organisations including foundations, philanthropic organisations, regional development banks and the private sector - and engages them in reporting on their actions as well as commenting on implementation by national governments and regional institutions.
Partnerships at regional level can be developed fostering the involvement of concerned stakeholders to exchange information and knowledge. Relevant institutions including regional development banks and other stakeholders from outside the region could be allowed to participate as observers.
It will be crucial to build on existing processes to avoid proliferation of monitoring frameworks and to minimise the need for additional resources. We encourage all member states to identify the most suitable forum in which to engage, using existing regional mechanisms including UN regional commissions where possible. UN regional economic commissions could play a coordinating role. They could organise and host the reviews, ensure input from all relevant sources, participation and engagement from all relevant stakeholders and setting guidelines and specific modalities for the peer reviews.
We see a close interaction between these regional reviews and the global and national levels. The outcomes of and key issue arising from the regional reviews should feed into the global review level. This can include the identification of main challenges and off-track issues, as well as good case studies on how countries and other stakeholders have started to implement the framework, as well as of examples of successful partnerships with other stakeholders at national and regional levels. The HLPF may consider a specific session dedicated to the regional reviews to discuss main headline messages and lessons learned as well as the harmonisation of reporting formats and feedback the results to the regional and national levels.
Both global and regional reviews should contribute to national implementation of the post-2015 agenda and national reporting. Lessons learned, exchange of experiences and best practices, identification of obstacles and off track issues can provide benchmarks to countries and contribute to the national assessment of the implementation of the agenda and foster national action.
