Activities of the Commissions

Mr. Paolo Garonna has been appointed Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in Geneva (ECE). Mr. Garonna, who is an Italian national, has been Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Padua, Faculty of Statistics. He studied in Italy, in the United States as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Denver, and in the United Kingdom at Cambridge University. He has written many books and articles on economic policy and official statistics, and is a well known expert in labour and social policy issues. He first joined the UN as Director of the Statistical Division of ECE.

The recent terrorist attacks in the USA have led to increased tension in Central Asia, posing a new challenge to all of the five economies of the region—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. This is due to the geopolitical fact that these countries are situated “next door” to Afghanistan.

The quest for stability has been a major concern in Central Asia ever since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. One of the instruments of the quest has been the United Nations Special Programme for the Economies of Central Asia (SPECA), which covers the five economies of the region.

The programme of SPECA was established in 1998 by ECE and ESCAP as an instrument for promoting economic cooperation in the sub-region and for mobilizing additional internal and external resources for solving common priority issues, especially the issues that can be jointly solved in a more efficient way. The purpose of the Almaty meeting on 27-28 September 2001 of the governing body of the SPECA’s Regional Advisory Council was to discuss ways of strengthening regional economic cooperation and, on that basis, provide guidance to the SPECA sectoral project working groups.

The idea of socio-economic development as an effective stability preventive measure in the economies of Central Asia has been referred to by both high-level Government officials and experts. Participating countries addressed an appeal to the United Nations for speeding up economic development and cooperation in the region on the basis of the SPECA Programme, which aims to consolidate institutional capacity at the national and regional level, and to build democratic governance and enhance stability and human security in the region.

The participants of the session agreed that the in-depth analysis on the issues of energy and water, transport and border crossing will take place at the next session of the Regional Advisory Committee in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic, on 13 - 14 February 2002 .

A special meeting of ECE’s Expert Group on Public Private Partnership (PPP's) has agreed to work with governments to develop pilot projects in infrastructure. The purpose of this agreement is to showcase to countries in South East Europe and other transition economies the potential of PPPs and to facilitate dialogue between the private and public sectors that is essential for their success.

The ECE Expert Panel is made up of business people, project managers, bankers, legal experts and leading government officials, and they will be requesting potential projects from governments in the coming months and will continue to serve in its advisory and training role while conducting the process.

ECE has just launched the United Nation electronic trade Documents (UNeDocs) project. The project is supported by other UN regional commissions, the UK Simpler Trade Procedures Board, the Swiss Secrétariat d'Etat à l'économie and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. The implementation of the project will start in the United Kingdom.

UNeDocs aims to facilitate the use of documents in international trade by providing default forms for trade documents that can be used both on paper and with computerized systems. Today, in the computer era, paper-based trade documents are still the predominant way by which traders exchange their information along the supply chain, increasing the cost of international trade, which amounts every year to an estimated 5% to 10% of the value of the traded goods.

UNeDocs specifically seeks to incorporate the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), developing countries, and countries in transition to a market economy, and allows them to link to the international supply chain using either paper or the Internet. ECE will provide a simple and free-of-charge system for electronic trade documents that will integrate paper documents into the new XML and Internet based communication systems. This could bring enormous benefits to world trade in terms of narrowing the digital divide, reducing costs and increasing speed and security. Funding and contributions have so far been received from the Swiss and United Kingdom governments and the first project phase is scheduled to start in the fourth quarter of this year.

The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to re-integrate the TIR Customs transit system

Following the acceptance of the TIR Convention by the Government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in March 2001, the ECE secretariat has been cooperating with the Yugoslav Federal Customs Administration to re-establish the TIR Customs transit procedure in this country, an important transit country in the Southeast European transport corridors. In July 2001, the ECE secretariat conducted a TIR Training Seminar in Belgrade for senior Customs officials and heads of regional and local Customs offices. The objective of this Seminar was to familiarize senior Customs officials with the procedures required under the United Nations TIR Convention. With the introduction of the TIR procedure, international road transport and trade will be able to move efficiently to, from and through this country.

ECE's spring seminar focused on the topic of “Creating a supportive environment for business enterprise and economic growth” by holding two panel discussions on the difficulties corruption posed for the transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe.

The first panel discussion was on “Corruption in economic transition and development: grease or sand,” and the second was on “Governance and corruption in transition: the challenge of subverting corruption”.

The panellist recommended that in order to create a supportive environment for business enterprise and economic growth, effective anti-corruption policies would need to be implemented. This would require action on a number of fronts, including reduction of too-complex regulations that raised opportunities for government officials to exact bribes, and requiring simplification of tax and tariff regimes.

The First Forum of Women Entrepreneurs opened on 22 October 2001 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. The majority of the 350 participants were women entrepreneurs and representatives of women's business associations from countries in transition, but there were also some women entrepreneurs from western countries who also participate in the Forum. Their companies differed in size and ranged from micro- and small- to large-sized enterprises, providing various services (IT services, advertising, travel, health care) and goods (leather goods, garments, innovative souvenirs, like candied edible flowers, or pneumatic tires).

The Forum opened with presentations by five successful women entrepreneurs from Armenia (garment industry), Kyrgyzstan (credit union), Poland (leather goods), Turkey (pharmaceuticals) and Switzerland (watches). Despite large differences in the overall economic environment in their countries and the areas of activities, there were many similar barriers, such as limited access to information, business networks and collateral as well as the traditional attitude towards the gender role and unfavourable social climate.

The Forum also discussed several proposals made by the ECE secretariat on how to overcome barriers in development of women’s entrepreneurship in countries of the region through a better use of the ECE regional framework. These proposals included, among others, establishing technology and e-commerce learning centres and a Euro-Asian foundation of women entrepreneurs to mobilize resources needed to finance these activities, as well as creating an on-line network of women's business associations on the ECE web site and a cyber-market for women entrepreneurs. The Forum considered the establishment of an award for the ECE woman entrepreneur of the year in several categories.

Civil liability agreement on environment

A new legally binding instrument will be drawn up on civil liability for transboundary damage caused by industrial accidents in the member States of ECE. This breakthrough is the result of a two-day meeting of the Parties to the ECE Conventions on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes and on the Transboundary Effects of Industrial Accidents, Geneva, 2-3 July 2001. The legally binding instrument will be negotiated within the scope of both Conventions, and the first negotiations will take place in November 2001. Environmental NGOs and other stakeholders, such as insurance companies, as well as countries that have not signed up to the Conventions will be encouraged to take part. If the negotiations proceed smoothly, the legally binding instrument may be ready for adoption at the next Ministerial Conference ‘Environment for Europe’, scheduled to take place in Kiev in May 2003.

The proposal for a legally binding instrument on civil liability for transboundary damage caused by industrial accidents was first made in the wake of the mining accident at Baia Mare (Romania), which caused widespread water pollution in January 2000.