Parliamentary Question addressed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade

To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if he will report on the outcome of the EU Council meeting to determine an agreed EU position for a development framework post 2015; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

Reply (Minister of State, Mr Joe Costello T.D.)

The elaboration of a strong, coherent EU approach to the negotiations for a new global development framework after 2015, the target date for the Millennium Development Goals, has been a priority for Ireland’s Presidency of the EU. The issue was central to discussions at the Development segment of the Foreign Affairs Council which I attended in Brussels on 28 May.
The importance of the post-2015 development process is reflected in the intensity and range of discussions now taking place at all levels internationally, within the European Union, through the High Level Panel appointed by the UN Secretary General, which issued its report last week, and in the UN Open Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals, on which Ireland is represented, in New York. The UN has also this year organised eleven major thematic consultations and over fifty national and regional consultations internationally so far this year.

The first substantive discussions on a post-2015 development framework were held by EU Development Ministers during the informal Ministerial meeting which I chaired in Dublin on 11-12 February. Since then, officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, the European External Action Service and the European Commission have been working in close cooperation, together with EU Member States, to agree Conclusions setting out the broad EU position on the post-2015 international development framework in advance of a major UN Special Event on the MDGs, which will be held in New York in later September.

The EU position is outlined in draft Council Conclusions on the “Over-arching Post-2015 Agenda”, which were endorsed by EU Development Ministers at the Foreign Affairs Council on 28 May. They will next be considered for endorsement by EU Environment Ministers at the Environment Council on 18 June, with a view to formal adoption by the General Affairs Council on 25 June. When adopted and published, I believe that the Conclusions will demonstrate that the Irish Presidency has played a major role in bringing together the different aspects of the fight to end extreme poverty and hunger and the challenge of achieving environmental sustainability in a single, integrated approach by the EU to the work internationally over the coming two years to establish a new global development framework.