UNECE – EFFICIENCY, COMPETENCE AND EXPERTISE

The UNECE is celebrating its 60th anniversary.
Interview with Marek Belka, former Prime Minister
of Poland and Executive Secretary of the
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
(UNECE).

JEAN MICHEL JAKOBOWICZ

Did you know anything about UNECE before coming to Geneva?
I had been pretty well briefed by one of UNECE’s former Executive Secretaries, Danuta Hübner, who is currently a Commissioner in Brussels but who was a member of the government when I was also a member of the Polish Government. She was really enthusiastic about UNECE. I also knew people who
had been and are still working for UNECE. Which means that I was not totally unaware of the UNECE.

Any surprises when you arrived in Geneva?
The only surprise I had was the wide spectrum of activities which are dealt with by UNECE. It was basically a positive surprise. What I was expecting was an expert secretariat and in this respect I was not disappointed at all. But I would never have expected that there would be so many issues of expertise in such a small department.

Why does UNECE have such a wide spread of activities?
It is probably the result of history. While many organizations are currently working with macro economic issues, very few are handling issues such as those that are being dealt with in the UNECE, mainly because they need long term expertise and competence, which very few of these other organizations have. Which means that we are doing a job that no one else can do. The fact that the UNECE has survived for 60 years tells you a lot about its relevance. Hardly any other European organization has had such a long history.

During the cold war UNECE was the only place where East-West matters could be taken care of. After 1989, UNECE was specialized in transition problems. Now that transition is over what is UNECEs’ niche?
First of all, transition is far from over. While certain countries especially in Central Europe have passed this period, the transition is still an unfinished business in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Secondly, we remain a handy forum for discussion among the UNECE countries which include not only the EU but also North America and former Soviet republics. It is true that East-West political dialogue is no longer an issue for the UNECE but much remains to be done in the region as far as transport, environment, energy, trade, statistics... are concerned. All these issues are at the heart of UNECE activities. In these areas we are noticing an important evolution, in that UNECE, which is by essence a regional organization, is more and more a global provider of public goods. We started as a European institution but in fact we are becoming more and more global. This is particularly true for the transport area where for example the UNECE vehicle regulations are now being applied by producers throughout the world. It is also true for statistics where the Conference of European Statisticians is the meeting place of the chief statisticians of all major countries in the world. In the field of environment the Air Convention’s Protocol on Persistent Organic Pollutants, the so-called POPs, has been taken up by UNEP to become a global Convention. Our norms on agricultural products are used in many countries outside the UNECE region. The UNECE coding system for electronic trade UNEDIFACT is used by companies all over the world...

Marek Belka and
José Manuel Barroso,
President of the European
Commission

What is the strength of UNECE?
First of all, its multilateral character. There are very few places in Europe where all governments can sit together and come to an agreement on economic issues. The second big advantage of the UNECE is that we do not deal with grand schemes. We do not specialize in providing solemn declarations. We specialize in providing practical products concerning certain very well defined topics. It is one of my principles that the UNECE should never undertake work in areas where we do not have strong traditional expertise and competence. In that sense we are quite conservative; we never take the risk of venturing into areas where we are not fully competent.

But you have just launched a new subprogramme on economic cooperation and integration!
It is true that this is something of an adventure, because it is relatively new territory.
But governments felt that with current expertise we could manage this important task. We are also good at handling transboundary issues. We do not concentrate on issues related to one single country but rather on groups of countries or the region as a whole. And countries trust us for that.

What do you want to achieve at the head of UNECE?
Our work programme is in place and defines quite clearly what I am expected to achieve. However what I would like to provide to UNECE is more visibility, so that it is recognized not only in specialized arenas but more broadly. Secondly, I would like to anchor our activities better in partnership with other organizations, much bigger organizations than ours. We could play a role for example in implementing some aspects of the EU new neighborhood policy. What is happening with OSCE is a good example of this anchoring. We are also intensifying our activities with UNDP. I would like to find good solid strong partners for what we do, which would increase not only our visibility but also our effectiveness. All in all we could do our job better.
I would also like to increase our sectoral approach to issues. We already have a number of such cooperation projects in the context of transport, health and environment, water and health, SPECA – the UN Special Programme for the Economies of Central Asia, which is in essence cross-sectoral. To this end I would like our regional advisers to be not only sector focused but mainly sub-regional focused.

What is the future of the Regional Commissions?
One of the major roles for the Regional Commissions – and there I am not speaking for UNECE – is to provide the regional dimension of economic analysis. It is already the case for ECLAC, which is a kind of OECD for Latin America. There is currently a tendency in the United Nations to strengthen the actions of the UN at the country level. However such a trend cannot be sustained if there is no strengthening at the regional level. Countries do not live in a vacuum, and what happens in one country is much more linked to its regional “home” than to the experience of countries of another region. In other words, if you want to understand what is happening in one of the Central Asian countries for example, you have to understand what it means to be a transition country in that region. This is a completely different set of problems to those which can be encountered in certain countries of Africa. The Regional Commissions are best placed to provide such analysis. In this context one aspect of our cooperation with the other Regional Commissions is to show the characteristics of certain issues. Last year for example, with my colleague executive secretaries, we discussed labour issues at the ECOSOC high level segment. We very quickly realized that this issue is important for every region, but the problems are different. What is important in Asia is not important in Latin America, the same goes for European industrialized countries and transition countries. Our job is to translate the global solutions at the regional level.

Do you mind dealing with microdown-to-earth things such as road regulations, standards for fruit...?
Not at all. I love to deal with concrete, practical things. I truly believe that there is much more value added when you help the automotive industry and the consumers in the whole world to provide quality standards for fuel. This will help introduce bio-fuel in countries where it is less popular, it will help to a certain extent to solve environmental problems. On the contrary I am not very thrilled by being forced to negotiate long declarations with endless discussions on commas and brackets. It may have a huge impact on big issues, but rarely.