Europe

“BUILDING BACK BETTER TOWARDS A MORE RESILIENT AND SUSTAINABLE POST-COVID-19 WORLD” 

Your Majesty, Emperor Naruhito, 
Excellencies, 
Distinguished delegates, 

It is a great pleasure to join this Special Session. I thank the Member States, the High-level Experts and Leaders Panel on Water and Disasters, and the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies of Japan for organizing it.   

[Trilingual as delivered]

Dear President Sassoli,  
Distinguished Members of the European Parliament,  
Ladies and gentlemen, 

It is a pleasure to finally be back in Brussels. 

Having myself been a member of the Portuguese Assembly for 17 years, I am particularly honoured to address the European Parliament.   

We live at a time when the strategic partnership between the European Union and the United Nations is more indispensable than ever.  

And on behalf of the United Nations, let me begin with two words:  

Secretary-General: Thank you very much for your warm welcome. I think we must be humble when we face such a huge number of existential threats and recognize the fragility of our societies and our planet. Fragility in relation to the pandemic, in relation to climate; Fragility in relation to lawlessness in the cyberspace, in relation to growing inequalities and the lack of trust in many of our societies; Fragility also because of geopolitical divides; Fragility even because of the risks in relation to the proliferation of nuclear weapons that are there again on the table. 
 

Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure to be back.

The European Union and in particular, the Commission, has been a very strong supporter of the UN in all the dimensions of our work. And so, this is the moment to express my deep gratitude and appreciation.

Well, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen of the media, it’s an enormous pleasure to be with all of you today. I want, first of all, to thank Prime Minister Boris Johnson for his kind invitation. It's for me a pleasure to join several of the sessions, the working sessions, of the G7. 

And there are two issues of enormous interest for me and for the work I do as Secretary-General of United Nations. One is related to vaccination and the way to defeat COVID-19. And the second is climate change and climate action to defeat climate change.  

Spasibo Bolshoi.

I would like to thank Foreign Minister Lavrov for his invitation to visit Moscow, and for the warm hospitality extended to me and my delegation during our stay.

This visit takes place a few days after Victory Day, and I want to take profit of this occasion to express my deep congratulations to the Government and the people of the Russian Federation.

Magnificent Rector,

Ladies and gentlemen of the media, thank you very much for your presence.  At the moment in which we conclude the 5+1 talks on Cyprus here in Geneva, I want to express my deep gratitude and the gratitude of all participants to the Swiss authorities for all the facilities that they have provided to guarantee the smooth development of our work in the difficult times we are living in with COVID. 

Thank you very much, Mr. President of the Bundestag Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble, for the opportunity to speak here in the German Bundestag today.
Dear Federal President,
Dear Chancellor,
Dear President of the Federal Constitutional Court,
Dear Members of the Bundestag,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Dear members of the press, it is for me an enormous pleasure to be back in Germany. Indeed because of COVID-19, I've had very few missions this year. But I really wanted to come and accept Germany's invitation of the President of the Bundestag to address the Bundestag because these are challenging times, but Germany is a reliable and generous and an exemplary party when we face these challenging times.