Distinguished guest speakers, dear participants, from all over the world, more than 100 countries are represented today for this webinar. On behalf of Sifa Flanders' board and of SDSN Belgium, welcome. I sincerely hope you, your family and colleagues are all healthy and safe in this challenging time of corona. It is my pleasure and honor to open this international webinar to discuss the alignment of the European Recovery Plan and the European semester with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the SDGs. The key question of this webinar is, how SDG-proof is the EU recovery plan? And what is the position of the Belgian federal government? My name is Peter Wollacht. I am fellow of the United Nations Institute of Training and Research, UNITAR in Geneva, and managing director of Sifa Flanders. Sifa Flanders is a UNITAR affiliated training center on peace, human rights, and sustainable development with a focus on the implementation of the agenda 2013. Sifa Flanders was created in 2013 and is based in Antwerp, a port and diamond city in Flanders, Belgium. Sifa Flanders is one of the 20 international training centers of the Sifal Global Network. And so a special welcome to all our colleagues from UNITAR and of the Sifal Global Network. Sifa Flanders is a foundation of public utility and supported by more than 25 partners. It's a multi-actor network of authorities, companies, institutions, and civil society organizations. This network of partners is our SDG learning network. They are the front runners in capacity building and implementation of the SDGs. Sifa Flanders is also a funding member of the SDSN Belgium Network. The Sustainable Development Solutions Network was established in 2012 by Professor Jeffrey Sacks as a global network for sustainable development and operations under the auspices of the United Nations. SDSN Belgium was founded in 2018 and is an independent network of educational institutions, research centers, businesses, and knowledge institutions. The mission of SDSN Belgium is to mobilize Belgian scientific and technological expertise and strengthen capacity to promote practical solutions for sustainable development. The concept of this webinar. The SDSN Belgium members here you can see on the screen at the moment and we are very honored to be part of this network of expertise. The concept of this webinar. This is the program. I'd like to introduce to you Mr. Nikhil Sett, who is the UN Assistant Secretary General and Executive Director of UNITAR. And after his introduction speech, we will have an introduction on SDSN on the European Semester and Recovery Plan on Belgium's recovery plans, followed by a panel discussion and some closing remarks. I really like to give the floor to Mr. Nikhil Sett, UN Assistant Secretary General and Executive Director of UNITAR. Mr. Sett, the floor is yours. Thank you, Peter, the Director of UNITAR's Seafall Center and to the UN, SDSN Belgium. Thank you very much. And I want to welcome also all the participants to the webinar today. In fact, those were heady days in 2015, when in September that year the world signed on to the SDGs with the promise of ending poverty, of reducing inequality, promoting peaceful and just societies, and putting a fragile planet on a sustainable trajectory. Realizing this agenda called for a complete transformation in our political, economic and financial systems with policies oriented first to the most vulnerable in our societies with vulnerability being defined by income, by gender, by age, by remoteness, by disability, by indigenous issues and so on. But this was not happening and is not happening. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was not on track and progress on the SDGs was uneven. Yes, it's true that more children were in school. Yes, there was improvement in the drinking water situation. And there was an increase in the participation of women in leadership roles. But hunger was on the rise. And our natural environment was declining very rapidly. Inequality was rising in all regions. The scale of change and the transformations that were needed to get to the SDGs by 2030 was not happening. The post COVID scenario has shaken the 2030 agenda to its very core. The pandemic disrupted even the mild successes that we saw in the earlier period, and in fact has pushed back progress globally by several decades. While the hurdles in our paths are truly daunting, and the ambitious 2030 agenda may look even more unattainable, this is not the time to fret or to wring our hands in despair. We need to continue to focus on growth with inclusion, equity, and sustainability. The COVID crisis has been universal in its impact, and it has exposed once again the fault lines of our unequal world and societies. Over 71 million, according to the World Bank, have been pushed back into extreme poverty. Over 1.6 billion people in the informal economy have been severely affected. Over 1 billion slum dwellers are increasingly vulnerable. Older people, the disabled, migrants and refugees, schoolchildren, women are among those who have been very hard hit. We have been disrupted everywhere. Mental health issues, domestic abuse, school closures, and greater violations of human rights dominate our news feeds. Life altering consequences of COVID-19 will reshape our societies everywhere, forever. The economic impacts of the crisis have been dramatic. We are in the worst recession in generations. The trade is plunging dramatically. Remittances of migrant workers has fallen and it fell over 20% last year. Foreign direct investment will decline by 40%. In this darkness, the framework and principles which were created in 2015, the SDGs are key to building back better society and to prepare us to face an even larger looming crisis, the climate change emergency that we face. If I were to put all this crisis that we face, economic, social, environmental, and especially the one on climate change, and I was to translate them into some sort of simple transitions. I would say that the five transitions the world needs now are the following. First, transition and health system driven by universal healthcare. Second is a transition in our energy systems driven by accessibility, renewables and efficiency. Third is transition in our agricultural systems driven by ending hunger and sustainability in our increasingly water scarce world. Fourthly, transition in our educational systems driven by the power of new technologies and the power they have in democratizing learning and education. And finally, transitions in our urban settlements driven by sustainability and a greater focus on the circular economy. I also strongly believe that the technology and its applications will drive each of these transitions. These transitions are underway in many parts of Europe, and Europe has always set a very high standard for the rest of the world to emulate and must be also inclusive in its aid efforts, looking at these transitions. To reiterate the EU leaders for paving the way out of the current public health crisis. It's not gone. But yes, a path is clearly there and laying the foundations of recovery and for a more sustainable Europe through the EU recovery plan and the Green Deal initiative. The next stimulus package will not only help rebuild the post over Europe, but will also provide a platform to build back better aligning the European recovery with the STG's with a greener, more digital and more resilient region. There is a DSN dashboard that all 10 countries closest to achieving the STG's are in Europe as our 17 of the 20 top countries, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Austria, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Estonia, Belgium, Slovenia, UK, Ireland, Switzerland. And Croatia. There's a remarkable performance in an international perspective. Three Nordic countries stop the 2020 SDG index Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Belgium is ranked 11th position in the world but even the best in class are not on track to fully achieve the STG's by 2030. The STG's provide the ideal framework to guide immediate post crisis recovery and long term strategies toward more resilient societies. This magic phrase building back better under a post COVID-19 economic recovery and for financing within Europe and globally. The investment led recovery supports a sustainable, inclusive and resilient recovery from COVID-19 based on the European Green Deal addressing each of the 17 STG's. These are indivisible and needs to be equally addressed. More than stimulus packages that bruised aggregate demand, the crisis calls for a recovery driven by transformative public investments that support green infrastructure, digitization and technological advances and responsible consumption and production. The concept of the circular economy has caught the imagination on Europe and that must continue to be the bedrock of economic social environmental policies. Policy integration will be crucial in the decade of action. We can only reach higher levels of sustainable development by aligning policy plans with long term goals. The STG's provide a framework for long term goals and should be integrated into all policy fields in order to achieve them. We applaud the European Commission's efforts in integrating the STG's in the European semester and urge all member states to harmonize their recovery plans with Agenda 2030. The European recovery plans provide a historic opportunity to invest in the future as well. Agenda 2030 provides a framework for this future and should form the foundation of the recovery plans. Integration of policy was a central principle for the STG framework and we spent a lot of time on this concept as we were conceptualizing and writing Agenda 2030 and the STG's. An integration which would account for the several interfaces between peace and justice and environment and economic and social policies which are all closely enmeshed. What does this integration mean? It means that policies which are intelligent, whether at the regional level or the national level or the institutional level, must do a significant rethink of cost benefits and what are co-benefits. We can't dollarize all the benefits and costs often and it's only by looking at this analysis afresh that we can define better and more sensible policies to reach the five transitions that I mentioned in public health, in energy, in agriculture, in education for sustainable cities, has also prioritizing the interests and concerns of the most vulnerable. Let me close by once again expressing my gratitude to our training center in Antwerp and its capable director on the screen, Peter Wallach, for organizing this timely dialogue and to the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Belgium Commission for its various efforts and doing an advocacy in support of the STG's. I look forward to today's discussions and presentations by the European Commission, sharing of the Belgian experience, and of course, for Jeffrey Sachs own comments. Thank you very much, Peter. Thank you very much, Nikhil. We're going to continue through the agenda. So I think you've made phenomenal points, really insightful about how indeed the world is not on track in meeting the SDGs. Furthermore, many of the terrible ills of last year that we all consider to have been an awful year are in fact the consequence of the unsustainable trajectory that we were at. Indeed, the pandemic itself can be traced to the degradation of our ecosystems. So if we zoom in on Europe, as you were saying, Nikhil, are not just the sustainable development report but are specifically our European Sustainable Development Report that we published a couple of months ago shows that even before the onset of the pandemic, no country was on track to achieve the SDGs. And while Europe indeed performs relatively well compared with the rest of the world, there are a number of SDGs where the region is performing poorly. And this is SDG2, and this is due to our unsustainable agricultural practices and our unsustainable diets, as well as increasing levels of obesity. In Belgium, so if we zoom even further, that as it has just been mentioned ranks 11th in the global index has a very solid performance in a number of SDGs including for example SDG8 or SDG9 on decent work and industry innovation and infrastructure. However, it still has, and here once again we're talking pre-pandemic, it had serious gaps of performance in goals such as SDG13 on climate action or SDG12 on sustainable consumption and production. So in summary, indeed, we are in an unsustainable trajectory. We've seen last year the consequences of this trajectory and the SDGs continue to be the only framework that we had. I think Gil has explained in quite a bit of detail what it meant to reach that agreement. It was a highly participatory and exciting process. So this is the framework that we have and in fact in the midst of so much difficulties that we're going through, it's also a framework of hope. The SDGs are road map to a sustainable future, one that puts well-being at the centre, one that takes us to sustainable cities with decent jobs, with shared prosperity and healthy diets, and one where we can guarantee that our children will be enjoying the ecosystems that we have. So this is why at SDSN we are very pleased that the European Union is not compromising its vision of a green, inclusive and prosperous Europe in the face of the pandemic. And it's also why we think that it's particularly crucial to think through rigorous plans that can change the trajectory we're at and to do these as a way out of this crisis. We launched a number of facilities and programmes to achieve this. We have indeed the European Green Deal, which is tremendously ambitious and comprehensive. We have the objective of aligning the SDGs, the semester process with the SDGs, which would change our model of growth and the way we coordinate SDG-wide policies. And we also have the recovery and resilience facility. We are very excited that in today's workshop we're going to be hearing from the European Commission about how these different programmes connect to each other. And with this in place, we think that meeting the SDGs will be a matter of strong political leadership and ambitious policies. So we're also very keen on hearing from the federal government of Belgium about how they're thinking through the operationalisation of all of these strategies. This is precisely what SDSN is focused on, anchoring the SDGs, localising and thinking through what do these mean for a specific country and what are the concrete pathways for implementation. Because of the level of ambition in Europe and because of the level of urgency that we have, we have recently launched an umbrella network, the SDSN Europe, that is going to be coordinating the work of all of our national and regional networks in Europe, including of course SDSN Belgium, as well as the work of our over 315 institutional members from across the continent. This network is going to help us streamline our research connected to European policies, and it's going to help us create spaces for discussion, for debate, for co-creation of solutions and for sharing knowledge. We are very humble and very aware that the challenge ahead is phenomenal. We do need to think through about how to implement these goals. Indeed, SDSN has also put forward a six transformation framework that is almost identical to the one that Nikil presented. These frameworks facilitate the way we think about the goals and also help governments think through what ministries need to be involved, what kind of expertise we need, what kind of financial flows are necessary. This is what SDSN is going to be focusing on in Europe, and we hope that this webinar today will be the first of a series of webinars happening around the continent, led by our different networks. And because we've recently launched this European effort, we are very keen to hear from everyone participating in today's call. If you want to get involved, please reach out to us if you have specific expertise, if you want to think through these questions in your own country. Without further ado, I'm going to introduce our next speaker. She is Birli Nötz. She is, she works for the representation of the European Commission in Belgium as European semester officer, and is also a member of the recovery task force at the European Commission. She's in charge of coordinating and implementing the recovery and resilience facility. Previously, she was a state aid case handler at DG competition, and she holds a master of law from the Catholic University of Leuven and from the University of Chicago. We're very keen to hear your thoughts about how indeed are the semester process and the recovery and resilience facility going to be linked and what are some of the key components that countries need to take into consideration when developing their recovery and resilience plans. Over to you. Hello everyone and thank you so much also from my side for the organization of this event, which could not be more timely. As you may know, the European Parliament will vote tomorrow on the recovery and resilience facility, which I will be talking about today. Sustainable development is enshrined as a core principle in the treaty on European Union. Last November, as most of you know, the Commission set out its comprehensive approach to delivering on the SDGs. Each of the 17 SDGs features in one or more of the six headline ambitions of the von der Leyen Commission. These are implemented in a holistic way using a whole of government approach with every commissioner ensuring the delivery within their policy area. And important to underline euro studs monitors progress towards the SDGs both at an EU and member state level, and you can see the key strands of this approach on this slide. So focus on two strands today, embedding sustainability in the European semester of economic governance, and using the SDGs to guide the objectives of the recovery instruments next generation, you. So what is the European semester, while it is the annual coordination cycle of economic employment and social policies with specific monitoring also of member states fiscal policies and broader macroeconomic policies. Since its introduction the European semester has evolved with the new political priorities it's a highly dynamic and highly agile tool. The social dimension for example has been gradually increased with the implementation of the European pillar of social rights now as being one of the key objectives. Importantly, the Commission monitors the implementation of SDGs in the semester since the 2020 cycle. And as I will explain today the semester has a prominent role in the EU recovery plan. And this shows the relevance of the European semester is undisputed. It has the attention of the highest political level across member states in Belgium, for example, there is a lot of consensus on our analysis on our recommendations. And why is this well because the Commission does not work in isolation. We have a permanent and very rich dialogue with stakeholders ranging from parliament governments administration social partners, businesses, academia and civil society. The cycle is kickstarted with the definition of the political priorities of the Union in the so called annual sustainable growth strategy, mark the word sustainable. The country reports provide a picture of the socioeconomic situation of each member states, the progress they made and the key remaining challenges, and in turn member states submit their national reform programs to the Commission. The Commission then proposes recommendations, which are discussed and endorsed by the Council. It is mainly the green dimension that was reinforced in the semester pre corona crisis with the green deal as the new European economic growth strategy to create an economy that works for people and the planet. And in particular to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050 with a just transition for all. And as you can see on the slide, this strategy has four interrelated dimensions with competitive sustainability as the guiding principle of the European social market economy and these four dimensions are green transition, digital transition and productivity, macroeconomic stability and fairness. The 2020 and 2021 annual sustainable growth strategy clearly highlighted how this economic agenda delivered via the semester ensures progress on all SDG dimensions, how by delivery on structural reforms, investment and fiscal policies. And this is what you see on this slide I have tried to match each of the four dimensions with each SDG. The recovery and resilience facility is at the very heart of the biggest financial support program ever financed through the EU budget next generation EU with a total package of 1.8 trillion euros. And the instrument is founded on borrowing for spending. It will provide massive support for investments and reforms to allow Europe to emerge stronger from the current crisis in those crucial first years of the recovery with grants worth 312.5 billion and 360 billion in loans and support is available to all member states with a focus on the hardest hit by the crisis. 5.9 billion in current prices is earmarked for Belgium in grants alone. And to benefit member states must submit recovery and resilience plans, setting out their national reform and public investment agenda until August 2026. And these plans must comply with strict conditions and criteria they must address challenges and priorities identified in the country specific recommendations and here is the link with the European semester, strengthen growth potential job creation and social and institutional resilience and support the green and digital transition. This instrument is solidarity in action. Europeans teaming up to help each other with tangible real life projects across the Union, improving the lives of all Europeans, lifting real GDP levels by over 2% at points points of GDP by 2024 with up to 2 million new jobs by 2022 and with the positive impact on lower income countries creating positive spillover effects for higher income countries by increasing demand for their exports. And how does the recovery and resilience facility work. Well the commission is currently having very intense discussions on the draft plans. Final plans can be submitted once the facility is legally enforced, which is expected very soon on the 18th of February and up to 30th of April. And the commission will be able to disperse the funds once the own resources decision is ratified. This is the instrument to allow the commission to borrow the funds on financial markets and several countries have already ratified. I understand this is still in the making in Belgium. Importantly, the commission proposal for an implementing decision by the Council will include a detailed assessment of the plans in a staff working document, which is to replace the country reports this year. And I can already indicatively announce that this would also cover Member States progress towards the SDGs. So, what are the key attention points. While we are making good progress. There is still a lot of work ahead, and the timeframe is very tight. It will be key to ensure that all plans present the right balance between investments and reforms. Transformative reforms we've already heard it from Nikhil said are an essential part of each plan to address country specific recommendations and to make investments more effective and ensure the impact of the plan is ultimately long lasting. Policy is also a performance based instrument payments will be linked to performance on the basis of agreed milestones and targets. Effective delivery of the investments and reforms in the plan requires national ownership, as Maria has underlined countries should engage in a comprehensive policy dialogue to prepare and implement the plan to onboard key stakeholders, such as social partners and civil society. The must audit and control mechanism must also be in place, given the large amounts involved to avoid serious irregularities and no double EU funding of same costs is involved. The plan requires also not crowd out private investments and must aim rather to mobilize private investments and to help members states the Commission has published extensive guidance on all the elements to be included in the plans. On one slide. The plan must represent a coherent and balanced response to the economic and social situation of the member states, contributing appropriately to all six pillars of the facility, which you can see listed here. In order to the implementation of the plans, a scoreboard will be made operational by the end of this year with updates every two years. And what I wanted to highlight on this slide is that the six pillars of the facility. They match up well with the six transformations concept to reach sustainable development, developed by Professor sex who is also present here today, and also the five transitions mentioned by Nikhil said earlier. And the idea is also mentioned in the 2019 UN global sustainable development report as Maria was saying. Reforms and investments that support the climate transition should be prioritized, at least 37% of expenditure investment and reforms in the plan should support climate objectives. In addition, every individual investment and reform measure must respect the do no significant harm to the environment principle. The COME regulation sets out six environmental objectives to which no significant harm should be done. And this is a key requirement for the Commission to green light the plan. It is there to avoid as much as possible potential negative green trade offs of reforms and investments. And the Commission will provide further guidance on this principle very soon. The United States should also demonstrate a high level of ambition to achieve the digital transition with their plans with a minimum of 20% of digital expenditure. Multi country and cross border projects contribute to scaling up the European strategic digital and green capacities and all member states are invited to include such projects in their plans. We are also invited to indicate how their plan will contribute to the 2025 EU wide ambitions in the European flagships, which you can see listed here, there are seven of them to address issues that are common to all member states that need significant investments and are needed for the green and digital transition. The resilience plans will be assessed against the 2019 and 2020 country specific recommendations for which no substantial progress has been made. And as you can see here the 2019 and 2020 country specific recommendations to Belgium are structured around four main themes. The first one which contributes to Belgium's delivery on the SDGs. You see here too that the Sustainable Development Solutions Network assessment of Belgium's challenges and priorities largely coincide with the assessment under the European semester. Sustainability is now clearly embedded in the European semester of economic governance. To the recovery and resilience facility is solidarity in action. It offers a historic opportunity for the EU and member states to kickstart economic repair and recovery in a sustainable way, accelerating the SDG delivery. One thing is clear to bank on this opportunity, ensure it is a lasting success and improves the life and livelihood of every European with positive global spillover effects. Every level will have to do its bit and team up governments, civil society, science and business, EU institutions. And with solidarity comes responsibility. So what matters for most now is that every member state takes full ownership of the instrument and the commission stands ready to work with member states to ensure the funds are put to their best possible use. I thank you for your attention and look forward to your questions. Thank you very much, Wielenaute for this very focused presentation. It gives a very clear overview of the framework of the European semester and recovery plan. So we hope of course for a positive vote tomorrow in the European Parliament. Thank you so much to be with us this afternoon, European time, and hopefully to work together. Not only with the CFAL centers in Europe but also with the network of the SDSN network in Europe. So thank you so much to be with us this afternoon. On the floor to our Belgian Federal Minister, State Secretary, I need to say for recovery, strategic investments and science policy, Mr. Thomas Dermin. Mr. Dermin, thank you for being with us this afternoon to talk about the specific Belgian position towards this huge, I think maybe to say historic European plan of recovery in the midst of COVID-19. Mr. Dermin, the floor is yours. Good afternoon everyone. It's a real pleasure to be with you this afternoon and I'm very pleased to be here. Thanks for the organization. I think it's a great opportunity to share the SDG in practice and echoing the presentation of Mrs. Noyts. It's a good opportunity to show a positive case of dialogue between the commissioner and a member, I'm invested in this case Belgium because I can confirm that the process is very intensive these days as we have submitted our first, I mean one part of our first draft on Friday. And I want to thank all my teammates and also the teammates of one of my colleague, Minister, who has been working on this with us. I want to also start by saying that the commission and the European Union actually has really played an amazing role in the preparation of the aftermath of the corona crisis. I think that as it has been often said Europe, Europe is building itself through crisis and the corona crisis is another case and I hope that we will in the future look at the corona crisis as a moment where Europe has actually stepped up in a way forward in its integration. And the way the commission is working with the member state in order to find their way out of the crisis by also investing in the reforms and the projects that are needed to basically improve the long term situation of the member state is really remarkable and as a true believer in the European integration process I think we can be very happy of this. So that was the first comment I wanted to make to the position. I will try to share my screen. Cool. Excellent. So it's a great opportunity actually to share a few words on our plan in Belgium. I will first resonate for public investment in Belgium and then give you a few highlights on what our recovery plan for Belgium looks like and basically you'll get a snapshot of the documents that the team at the commission will receive or has received in the last days. And then actually we together with the team of Minister Catabee we try to lay out all basically we want to put SDG at the core of the work we do with the RRF in Belgium. So three things that are very important to us regarding the COVID-19 crisis. So first, the magnitude has never been seen before. I mean if you compare this is the GDP change quarter per quarter and basically what you observe is that the order of magnitude of the crisis in Belgium but it has been the same across most of the states worldwide has never seen before. What we observe also is that it has a huge impact on inequalities. What we observe in Belgium is that we have a positive shock on savings. The National Bank has released a report that basically saying that at an aggregate level 24 billion of additional savings has been accumulated through a crisis. But actually if you look at the distributional impact of this, it has a very different impact from decide to decide in terms of income distribution. And the most vulnerable person actually are being increasingly vulnerable to the crisis, whereas the most well off are being increasingly well off the crisis. So this is very an important aspect of the crisis is the impact on the income distribution. And the third aspect, which is very important is that because it's not what I would say a systemic crisis in the sense that it has no monetary route, the actually the rebound effect that we might expect is quite high. I mean, this the last bar in the bar chart is the GDP variation in the third semester of 2020. And actually in Belgium in the third semester, so it was about the summer, we have released the economy and what we have observed is actually that the GDP has gone back to a very high rebounds level. And so basically what we try to do with the government is basically two things in the short term we try to protect as much as we can. The economic social economic engine of the country, while at the same time we are preparing the recovery and resilience plan that we are drafting together with the European Union. Next, please. What we really appreciate in the approach of the commission is that actually it seems that we have learned from the past, and that we have learned that the best way to get out of a crisis, especially a crisis of this nature is actually to invest our way out of the crisis, while combining with structural reforms that are long needed. And this is a very interesting review by the National Bank of Belgium actually showing that if you do it the right way, the combination of smart public investment together with the reforms that are needed is one of the very good way to stimulate GDP but also private consumption and private investment. And that actually if you do this in a period where the economy is not going bad, not going well, the multiplier effect is even bigger. And something that we have to keep in mind for those who don't know very well the Belgian economy is that actually we have been lagging behind in terms of investment if you compare Belgium to other countries. This graph shows you the European average at the European public investment grades in comparison with the blue line which is the AU 27 average and actually over the last 20 years, we have been under significantly investing significantly in comparison with the AU average. And if some of you are living in Belgium, you can see that if you see the level of some of the public infrastructure in Brussels or around the country. What we see and we therefore really, I mean support the approach of the commission is that we see the corona crisis as basically a very specific momentum where we can reverse that trend in terms of public investments. We have taken a very strong commitment in our government agreement you know that Belgium has a new government since October 2020. We have a commitment to go back to 4% of public investment by 2030 with an interim target of 3.5% by the end of 2024. You know also maybe that Belgium has a very specific institutional system and that the regions, so Flanders, Wallonia and the region of Brussels have very strong competencies in terms of investment so if we have to divide to design a comprehensive investment plan we have to do it together and that's also something we appreciate the stimulus of the commission in this recovery and resilience plan is that it has really stressed that we should have one single coherent approach for Belgium, and that we shouldn't do what we sometimes do in Belgium is having four different chapters, which each one corresponding to one of the regions so since the very beginning of the effort. It takes a bit of time but we try to work together to have one single comprehensive approach for Belgium, basically addressing five different challenges that globally overlap very well with the ones that have been presented in this presentation in terms of how do we build infrastructure to meet the environmental challenge and meet our commitments to reach the Paris agreements. How do we cope with the digital challenge knowing that it will and it has impacted the job market in Belgium and the type of trainings that we that we need in this country. The mobility challenge, you all know that Belgium is can be quite a mess in terms of mobility and some other cities also so we need to invest it's a question of succeeding in the model shift but it's also a question of raising the productivity in Belgium. And we know we have a very strong social system in Belgium, we can be very proud of it and it has proved that it has worked during the corona crisis but we know that we have also a long term challenge in terms of financial sustainability of the system, especially on the pension side and that's why it's one of the area of the CSR of the Commission in Belgium and one of the key aspects of reform in the next few years. And the fifth challenge which is very important for Belgium is what we call the productivity challenge Belgium has always been one of the most productive country in the world and that's the reason why we have the welfare state that we have in Belgium. But over the last decade, the productivity gap between Belgium and other neighboring states has been smaller and smaller so we need to keep on investing to basically sustain this high productivity in Belgium. So what does our plan look like. That's the big question so we have been working very intensively with with the regions in Belgium within the federal government to follow the timing of the commission and that's also something very important actually is that in Belgium sometimes it can take a lot of time to discuss and to agree in between the different levels in the Belgium institutional system and the fact that we have an external timing imposed by the commission which is very, very, very rapid. It really helps us in Belgium to find agreement very fast and if you look at what we have delivered in terms of agreement between regions etc over the last two months, it's pretty remarkable in Belgium, and it is partly due to the fact that the commission is imposing a very strong tempo on the work that we are doing. So basically we have submitted the first drafts with the project last Friday. This week or next week we will submit the other 50% of the plan which concerns the reforms and the structural reform that we commit to and the idea is to use the next two or three months to exchange with the commission but also with the Bureau Federal du Plan, the Federal Plan Bureau to assess the impact of the plan and make sure that we prioritize the projects and the reforms based on the impact on socio-economic outcome but also environmental outcome. What will you find in our plan? So we focus of course on investment, that's one part of the story, productive investment related to the five challenges I have highlighted. We also have an ambitious reform agenda that relates to the CSR, so the country-specific recommendation was in the European semester that Mevron Neut has spoken about. In Belgium the good thing is that in the regions and at the federal level, we have had, I mean we have relatively new governments and so the CSR of 2019 actually were known at the time we were drafting the government agreements. So we already have in our government agreements part of reforms or some elements of the reforms that we need to do. What we need to do now is really put details in the roadmap reforms that we need to do. And that's what we're going to work on with the team of the commission in the next few weeks. As said before, we have 5.9 billion of grants from the recovery and residence facility. What we have done so far is that we're working on 130% of this total amount in order to have a margin for adjustment based on the feedback we will receive from the commission and from other external bodies. We try to work with big significant project and to avoid that we have tons of very small projects. So we have 89 investment project with an average size of 87 million euro and we try to reduce the number of components, the project types to less than 20 actually we have reached 19. So just to give you a few examples of the projects and what are the type of projects that we will fund in terms of investment on the five different axes in terms of sustainability. We will fund the backbone for Hydrogen and keep capture of CO2. We will work on a new island in the North Sea to connect the different offshore mills. We will invest heavily in the renovation of public buildings, which are responsible for significant share of the CO2 emissions in Belgium. In terms of digital, we will invest heavily in digitization of public services with a special focus actually on justice who is lagging behind in Belgium. We are investing also in cyber security and we will do that together with the army and with other member states mobility it will be mostly investment in railway infrastructure for passengers but also for freight transport, which is very important. Also some projects in terms of inclusiveness, including training and research and then on productivity, we will have also a few very important projects in the industry, also in the port of Antwerp. I know that some of you, including Peter Woloth from Antwerp, but Antwerp is a very important entry door to Belgium but also to Europe and there are some issues with direct trafficking in Antwerp so we will invest heavily in preventing this from happening. Very shortly to conclude, who are we thinking of the link to SDGs? Relance is not about a back to normal shortcut and we really try to build new basis, both from the investment side and also from the reform side and we have a lot of taboos in policymaking in Belgium and this is also a good opportunity for governments at the regional level at the federal level to address those taboos. Yeah, if you go next Anton. And honestly, we had a lot of discussion internally but also with the regions on how should we report to the different projects and the different reforms, and we were confronted to the limits of the existing KPIs, whether it's employment, whether it's GDP, and so the toolkit and the framework of the SDG is very relevant to our work, and even before we actually learned that the commission was considering a reporting on the SDGs, we were considering the tool to actually have this kind of holistic approach on development, which is targeted with the development plan. The current crisis, and we are actively monitoring this within the government is actually having a drastic impact on many of the SDGs, whether it's impact on the outcomes in education on inequalities on health issues on mental health, which is very important these days. And we will use the same framework actually to evaluate the policies that we will lead in the aftermath of the crisis. And this is actually another way to put what Miss Knights has explained before we have the sustained SDGs which are included in the country report that we received from the commission, which are translated in the country through the recommendations, which are basically the basis for the reforms that we will include in our resilience and recovery plan so basically the SDGs through that channel are really at the core of what we do. What I'm doing right now, and I must say that it's quite an intensive job of my team together with the team of Mrs Zakia Kattabi is basically evaluating each investment project at the light of the 17 SDG to make sure that we have an exhaustive coverage of the SDG and we have the right ones where we need to have an impact so overall and I would like to end my presentation here because I think I've, I'm already over time but I mean the work on the SDG is really at the core of what we do both on the investment sites and also via the CSR on the reform site. Thank you very much. This was such an interesting presentation with so much so many details on on how you've been thinking through this process I was also very happy to see the happiness report again this idea of putting well being at the center. I know you have to go do you have a minute for one quick question. Yeah for sure. So you've been. You've mentioned that they're the next few months you plan some exchanges with obviously the Commission, the Bureau of Federal Government. Are there any consultation processes plan do you want. Are you going to be reaching out to academia to civil society to consult on these plans. Yeah, so it's, you know, it's always a trade off between speed and represent activity in your consultation process. I'm really sad that we don't have more time to do an exhaustive consultation process, which requires a lot of time but I do understand the reason why we don't have so much time is actually that in a recovery strategy. And as Keynes used to put it, time is of the essence. So basically, you need to release the investment right in the aftermath of the crisis, otherwise the impact will be lower. Nevertheless, we will do a lot of consultation in the next two or three months. We will have an interaction with the Commission, we will have the consultation with the Bureau federal du plan which is basically the economic entity responsible for impact assessment in Belgium. We will also have an impact assessment on gender equality with something we have an attitude for the quality between the men and the women, we will have an impact assessment on on inequalities by a body called SPP integration social. And also, some things in Belgium which is very cool actually which is conseil federal to develop more durable. So federal council for sustainable development, which integrates many NGOs active in the environmental field, also use association. And there will be involved in basically producing a report that will influence the government on the prioritization of projects going from 130% to 100%. And there will also submit a report on the reforms that we need to submit to the Commission. Thank you very much. I think we're going to start moving to our panel. So I'm just going to introduce our panel is one by one and ask them to turn on their camera. Mr. Franz Seier is the managing director of veto the Flemish Institute for technological research. He's a member. This is a member organization of SDSM Belgium that provides scientific advice and technological innovations that facilitate the transition to a sustainable society. Mr. Franz Seier is one of the main initiators between behind G stick, the global sustainable technological and innovation community and in 2017, he was appointed as honorary professor of the KU 11. We also have Eloise Bodin, policy analyst at the Institute of European environmental policy where she focuses specifically on the European semester SDG straight and economy. She has a business degree and a master's degree in political economy of Europe from the London School of Economics, and prior to joining IEP, she was a trainee at the DG environment of the European Commission. So Anton Muldermans, counsel to the Secretary, State Secretary, Mr. Dermene that we've just had with us. He coordinates the working group on sustainability for the drafting process of the Belgium Recovery and And finally, we have barely notes that will be also joining us again. Welcome everyone and thank you very much for joining us. Perhaps I will start with a question to just a follow up question to barely. I encourage all of our participants to ask questions via the chat. What are some of the key recommendations for Belgium relating to the SDGs you showed our dashboard from the SD SN sustainable development report. If you wanted to follow up, what would you say are key recommendations coming from the previous semester exercises. Exactly this is the If this is indeed the slide that I was presenting earlier. Indeed, so delivering on these country specific recommendations in the context of the European semester, as I explained before, really means delivering on all SDGs and and as I will explain here but for Belgium that this means delivering on almost all SDGs to you see that that the C is ours. So that's what we called them in the EU jargon country specific recommendations are structured around for main themes. Public finances sustainability, employment and training, green and digital transition and business environment. And as I already highlighted the challenges and priorities identified largely correspond with the challenges highlighted in the 2020 report by SD SN and the EU Institute for you environmental policy. So what are these different recommendations so first of all, the first policy recommendation is really to ensure sound public finances sustainable growth requires a sound budget and deteriorating public finances in Belgium, limit space for public investment, which has as Mr Dermien has explained remained low over a long period of time. The composition and the efficiency of public spending could be improved and this is where the so called spending reviews could be further institutionalized and be an important lever to achieve that by unlocking the efficiency gains they could generate savings without constraining growth. Fiscal frameworks also could play an important role in improving fiscal coordination between the levels of government and the sustainability of the pension system as Mr Dermien has also highlighted in his presentation is also an attention point. And implementing these recommendations would contribute to the delivery of SDG 16 and eight in the area of employment and education. I'm sorry I just noticed that my video was not on so here I am. I hope you can all see me again. In the area of employment and education. The council recommended that Belgium does different things first of all that it removes disincentives to work that ensures more active and more effective sorry activation measures to make sure that more people are at work, in particular for vulnerable and also that Belgium improves the performance and equity of the education and training system to make it digital and green transition proof. And this will also have a positive impact on the public finances and policy priorities here would include reducing the tax burden on labor. A skill strategy to promote lifelong learning and addressing skill shortages and mismatches and implementing these recommendations in this particular area would set Belgium on its path to the delivery of SDGs 123458 and 10 productive investments. Of course, as Mr Dermien has also highlighted are very central. If you want to have a swift recovery and really establish sustainably that path towards sustainable green and digital economy. A clear and stable legal framework to foster this transition is also very important in this area. And there are four recommended focus areas of investment to Belgium. Energy transition and circular economy. Sustainable mobility. Ensuring the adequate digital infrastructure is in place to enable the green and digital transition and Belgium legs behind here in 5G and fiber deployment and research and innovation and these investments will enable Belgium to achieve on a very large number of SDGs. And finally, the path towards a more sustainable economy requires that a business environment is in place, which is really conducive to foster public and private investment. We reform and investment recommendations here concern areas such as, you know, more thorough policy evaluation coordination between different government levels innovation, digitization of public services, lightening the administrative burden and removing barriers to competition and services. And so this is this is it for me. This is these are the recommendations on it at 2019 and 2020 recommendations to Belgium. Thank you very much. That was very useful. Did it perhaps moving to you and thinking about these umbrella areas that both the Commission, but then the government has just presented. What would you, what do you think are key projects that should be prioritized in these recovery plan. You know the country very well specifically the sustainable development environment. So what would you recommend. Well, I think there are good points and things that I would personally have seen a little bit different, but which are maybe different different implement first of all it's good that if you spend money we spend it on investment projects and we simply don't spend it on increase of wages or other stuff. I think the investments are necessary we should look for projects we have as much as possible a lasting effect on employability. You see in the plans of the Commission that there is a lot of attention for education etc which is which is good which is proper. At the same time, you need of course need to have jobs, which people can fill in. Because it's not only the fault or fault between brackets or the people that they don't find work if there's no work, you can be as educated as you want.  So you should look for in some of the investment project that we've seen, or at least which are which we think are in the pipeline, or for short term renovation of buildings for instance, once it's renovated it's renovated. And then the question is what will be the effect you can have an effect on reduced CO2 emissions. That's okay but when I hear that a large part of the CO2 emissions would come from buildings again that is not true. I keep repeating that it is not true. At half of the emissions in Belgium, at least in Flanders of her ministry ETS the other ones are non ETS can be 4060 and only one third of the non ETS is attributable to buildings I don't understand the fixation for buildings. And certainly with the plans which are in place we will not reach the goals intended the 80 to 90% reduction of the CO2 emissions for buildings. It's not the best way to spend money in this way. Sorry, but what you see is that there's a lot of mentioning I think properly if you look at the SDGs, and they come from the sustainability notion. So, the social component should be in there and the social component should be in there, almost the same level as the others. It's not a personal level. It's not a company it's not the veto position, but on a personal level. What you see is that if there is an investment, if there is a subsidy going to an industrial project, it will only be realized if that company makes a profit. Because otherwise it will not pass the internal criteria for an investment from that company. The efforts which are demanded from the private side from the public. It's only a cost. If you have to invest in it look at the present cost for renovating your buildings. We are at the CO2 costs for avoided emissions on the on the on the private side between 200 and 300 euro per ton CO2. On the industrial side, there was mentioning of an infrastructure pipeline for hydrogen and CO2. First of all, I'm a very big favor of that in infrastructure, not the same, but it will that CO2 capture will only happen if the companies will co-invest, it will be a PPP, make a profit on their investment. Otherwise it will not pass the decision level at their board. So here you have a situation where companies are will be making a profit from this entire transition that we are going through. And that civil society will have to pay. And from an SDG point of view, from an economic point of view, you can explain this from an SDG point of view. It's very difficult to explain. I could give you some, some more example of written your whole page. For instance, and that is a question of how do you structure a thing like that. Certainly if you compare this sort of investment package to investment package if I look to other countries like for instance in China. There's a lot of mentioning of, for instance, sustainable mobility. But they simply mean get people onto and I've put it again between brackets public transportation, but the public transportation is still defined in the way we know public transportation as it is today. But you could come up certainly if you look at the digital transformation if you look at the digital infrastructure with another type of public information public transportation. Where the public where you actually serve with the 5G where you actually serve each car. And you don't have to wait for very advanced cars to actually work together as soon as you have your 5G in place but that involves a different type of steering by government. And there you see a very large role in the commission because Belgium cannot do it alone because we are not on an island UK could do it. But we can't. I mean because we constantly have to have traffic from Germany, France, etc. But on an EU level which spans the continent, you can do it again. But it involves a different view on how these projects, these large infrastructural projects can serve public goods. I'll keep it at that. Thank you very much. Very insightful comments. I see that our final speaker has just joined us. Professor Sacks, we're still in the panel. I'm just going to ask a final question to our colleague Eloise Boudin. I want to hear. Wonderful. So, Eloise, you've done quite a bit of work and you've worked with SDSN on the question of monitoring progress towards the SDGs and in particular how the semester process can really align itself with the SDGs. There was a question in the chat specifically about how the commission can measure progress on the SDG alignment and what kind of tools and monitoring framework can the semester process use. Yes. Okay, thank you and thank you for the question and all the interesting presentations before me. So indeed, we've done some research on the European semester and met with different EU officials from the commission already and as we all know there's been a lot of progress in the integration of SDGs in the European semester. So we're very glad with what has been done in the past few years and I think the COVID-19 crisis showed how important it was to look beyond the GDP indicator when we do a budget planning. So at the IEP we've done some research on the possibility to integrate new indicators in the semester process and of course what we've heard back is that a lot of EU officials don't want to overburden the semester process. But what we've seen is that after the 2008 crisis a lot of growth indicators, a lot of indicators were added to the process and perhaps some of those could be replaced with more sustainable economy focused indicators. So we published a paper on that topic where we propose a dimensions of a sustainable economy. So that's one way of course to look at this and then there's also the possibility to have a civil society shadow reporting on the side of the semester that could be a good way to increase the member states accountability on this topic. And then I had one last point. Yeah, no. Thank you very much. Anton, I see that you're leaving. Can I ask you just a final question? Really sorry, but there was a question in the chat about whether the do no harm principle should also apply externally. So that would be outside of Belgium as the SN were were very thoroughly thinking through the question of spillover effects specifically for European countries where achieving the SDGs should not involve harming the opportunities of other countries to achieve the SDGs. I don't know if this is something that you've been thinking through in the first stage of drafting this plan or if it's something that you have in the pipeline for this 50% that is left. And most certainly in this process, one of our roles was of course to to lay the context and also educate all involved ministries and government levels about the structure of the RF. And so we've been giving trainings and we've been trained first by the Commission on not only what are the CSR's but also the expectations and the goal sets and so the do no significant harm principle has been shared quite widely and so we think that first filter has been applied and so our project should in respect that, but we are of course very much looking forward to the feedback from the Commission with all their expertise. And so we think that our draft report that we have now, we are very open to receive feedback on it and to still improve it and fine tune it taking into account remarks on this principle and of course also would be strange if it was not a shared objective to avoid negative spillover effects to other countries. So to the extent where we would be not aligned on that we still have three months in front of us to work hard on it and still improve the plan. Thank you very much. Well, I think at this stage, I will just thank everyone for joining us today it was be it has been a fascinating conversation really interesting to hear about the process that the Belgian government has gone through and and the recommendations from the Commission thank you very much really for a very thorough presentation on these. I'll give the floor now to Professor Jeffrey Sachs that I think needs very little introduction but still obviously he's the president of the SDSN and the university professor at Columbia University. He serves as the director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University where he holds the rank of university professor. He's an SDG advocate for UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez. Jeff, over to you. Maria, I'm going to pass it back to you, because I joined late, having been on a number of UN calls this morning, and I'd love to hear what are the main issues that came up. So I how can I be most helpful in it in the context of the SDSN and SDSN and I want to thank all my colleagues in SDSN Belgium for your leadership and participation, but I'd like to be helpful so I don't want to give you a boring repetitive talk I'd like to know what what should I focus on and how can I help. So Jeff, SDSN Belgium has taken the baton from SDSN an idea that we had, I believe two months ago where we said it would be very useful to have public seminars to discuss the recovery and resilience plans. And openly with members of the commission that can that can provide specific insights for the country. So this has been the seminar of today. I will ask Peter whether he has specific questions but the main topic has been what what is the why should we align the recovery and resilience plans to the SDGs. And then how so what are some of the key transformations that countries need to consider. And then specifically for Belgium what are some of the key recommendations that the European Commission has issued throughout the previous semester processes. And then also we've we've seen our sustainable development report and the dashboard for Belgium shown several times to highlight what are some of the challenges that Belgium has with specific goals such as for example sustainable consumption and production climate action and so Peter, I think, Jeff, it would be very useful to hear from you in terms of your thoughts about why it's so crucial to align the recovery to the SDGs and how what kind of specific items and countries need to bear in mind when doing so. I also want to give Peter the opportunity to ask any other specific question from is the SM Belgium that he may have. Great. Thanks a lot. Hi Peter. Hello, Jeff. No extra questions. So, indeed, like Maria said, it's all about that huge package of recovery at European level, and how we can work together so that this package is as much in line with the SDGs as possible. So to close my introduction. How SDG proof is this EU recovery plan. How SDG proof are the plans of the EU member states, and why is it important that they will be in line with the SDG agenda. Excellent. Peter, thank you very much. I think that the SDG agenda and with that, of course, I include the agenda of the Paris climate agreement and the convention on biodiversity to be most helpful because they give us a site on the horizon of where we're heading. They help us to think longer term. The societies are not very good at thinking long term. Europe is a bit better than the United States, we think. Now we think day to day during Trump we thought tweet to tweet. We had no long term orientation whatsoever. Everything was improv. And, of course, we were flailing about, and I regard the SDGs, mainly as the opportunity to take a longer term view. In that regard, I personally believe that the European Green Deal is exemplary in this. I'm a huge fan. And if we do, and I'll put in quotation marks, nothing more than achieve the European Green Deal. I think you're making history and deeply influencing the whole world. I think about the European Green Deal is three things. The time horizon, which is let's go deep and do this to mid century, for example, decarbonization. Let's be broad based so that the Green Deal is about. It's about decarb. It's about farm to fork. It's about circular economy. It's got a strong digital component to it. And I think that that is really extremely important. And the third thing I like about it is that it's very bureaucratic. And I say that in the sense of Vabarian bureaucracy. So Max Weber's sense of rational bureaucracy. Maybe because I've lived through complete irrationality, even psychopathic for the last four years. It's nice to see some clarity that these are the processes. These are the steps. That's what we're going to do. Of course, life should not be only bureaucracy, but without bureaucracy there's no order also so I actually like the fact that there are a number of pretty complex systems that are being engaged for the European Green Deal. Now the question is making it work actually making the investments that are needed to achieve success. And that is both an analytical challenge and a financial challenge and a practical political challenge. This is by no means easy to do, because it's not easy to make public policy with the time horizon of 30 years to stick with it and in our very confused world to actually move forward and because Europe is 27 and not eye to eye and in very different historical context and the issues of development and some have coal and others don't have coal and all the rest, bringing everybody along is obviously a major challenge. But I also like the fact that when Europe does this, it will inspire all the rest of the world to do it because I go everywhere in the world and say Europe has a Green Deal, why don't you. We're trying to get ASEAN to make an ASEAN Green Deal. We're meeting with the ministers of energy in Latin America to talk about a Latin American Green Deal. The African Union is interested of course in an African Union Green Deal. The United States is back from insanity and President Biden is committed to decarbonization by 2050. We're back in the Paris Climate Agreement, thank you. I just saw today, we're back in the Human Rights Council, that's a huge plus also. So lots of good things are happening and Europe, I think, is playing an extremely important role in this. So I would turn the question back, how do we make the European Green Deal really work? And is there clarity of the process? Is there realistic assessments of the investment priorities? Is there enough European-wide coordination for success? Because with Europe, there are European-wide goals but then typically national implementation. That was not good for COVID. You know, you can't have a tightly packed population moving constantly within Europe and control it in 27 separate nations and everybody has learned that but the European Union did not have an EU-wide mandate or strategy or plans and Europe has suffered a lot as a result of that excessive decentralization in responding to COVID, at least in my understanding of it. When it comes to energy, for example, what is the status of making a proper European-wide zero-carbon integrated energy system and energy market? That's the goal, not 27 separate energy policies but one energy policy for Europe as a whole to have an integrated low-cost efficient, robust, resilient, zero-carbon energy system. What is the prospect of, for example, electrification of freight within Europe? To what extent is that being coordinated? What about shipping in Europe, which is a big deal, a major industry for Belgium, for others? And to what extent is that being coordinated? What about for Airbus and the strategy for Airbus? Fortunately, there are only a handful of civil aviation long-haul passenger manufacturers, really only two for long-haul Boeing and Airbus. Is there a suitable strategy? What about the power grid? What about the ideas that have been around for at least 20 years now for connecting with North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean? How does Nord Stream 2 relate to decarbonization? Does this project still make sense in the context of a decarbonization strategy? So these are areas where I would like to read the definitive analysis by SDSN members and say, here's what works, here's what doesn't work, here's what can be left to nations, here's what needs to be done at the union-wide level. Let's get realistic. We're going to need this many trillion dollars of investment, here's what EIB can do, here's what the European budget can do, here's what private companies can do. That to my mind would help enormously. The farm-to-fork issues are equally as complex and even more complex in a way because while there's really only one energy system, there are dozens of farm systems. To what extent do we know what we're doing in food sustainability, healthier diets, regulation of the food industry to ensure healthy foods, and the relations to land use change. There's also the very big issue of Europe's international dimensions on this. Europe has the correct idea of putting border carbon taxes on. I think that's opened a lot of eyes and I think it's a very good idea. And I think it will become a general tool because I expect the US to do the same and others to do the same and I think that that will help enforce decarbonization. But there's another aspect which is long-distance supply chain management. And I'm probably out of date on the discussion in the European Parliament on a supply chain law to ensure sustainability of global supply chains. But this is very important for Europe because Europe's a huge demand or a primary commodities from the rest of the world. And so ensuring not only farm-to-fork sustainability within Europe, but also in Europe's agricultural global demand would make a huge difference. I know Brazil is, you know, profoundly aware of whether Europe will help to enforce the sustainability of the Amazon or not in buying products from Brazil. And I very much hope the answer is yes. Two more areas quickly to mention. One is the circular economy. I think Europe's discussions about circular economy are the most advanced in the world. It's just not a concept in most places, even though it's crucial. But it's not an organized policy concept in most places, but it is very much in Europe. It's about waste recycling, of course, plastics pollution, and so forth. So I think what Europe does in the circular economy side will be really important, not only within Europe, but also as a role model for the rest of the world. The final area that I would mention is the digital. Europe is absolutely in the lead on thinking about digital privacy, digital rights, digital monopoly, all very important. I wish there were more European big players, though, frankly, because right now Europe basically is trying to regulate US companies or Chinese companies, but I wish there were some European giants actually that were competing also with them, because I think it would be safer for the world if we weren't relying on three or four US companies in this sector. So, you know, what kind of public policy in the digital domain is going to be very important for meeting the SDGs. Because it's so intimately connected with all of the other goals of sustainable development, so I would put that on the agenda as well. So for me, Europe's really on the right track, it's already had a huge effect in spurring China, Japan, Korea and the United States to adopt similar kinds of programs. And I really give Europe the credit for this. I mean, I've seen it directly how influential Europe actually adopting the European Green Deal has been. Now we've got to make sure that that diplomacy stays very strong, that Europe implements all of this and insists that the partners do too. So those are just some opening thoughts or closing thoughts. Thank you so much, Professor Sags, dear Jeff, to be with us for hopefully a series of webinars on the importance of integrating the SDGs in all recovery plans across the globe. We've learned today that the recovery from COVID-19 provides a window of opportunity to accelerate the progress of the SDGs. It is important that we use the SDGs as a framework for the recovery plans and that we can join forces, multi-actor, interdisciplinary, intercultural, interreligious to build towards a more sustainable world. I do thank all guest speakers, panelists, participants. We are so glad that we could reach more than participants from more than 100 countries across the world for this webinar. So this is a new milestone also for SDSN, Europe, Belgium, and the CIFAL network in Europe and Flanders. So thank you so much to be with us here today. And I'd like to end with a very short poem because maybe one of the missing links in the agenda 2030 is arts. When we do some lectures and trainings with artistic groups, they say, where are we in the text? Where are we in the agenda 2030? Where is the importance of arts and culture in the agenda? And therefore I want to close this webinar with a very short poem of Rupi Kor. This is the recipe of life, said my mother, as she held me in her arms as I wept. Think of those flowers you plant in the garden each year. They will teach you that people too must wilt, fall, root, rise in order to bloom. Hopefully that the SDGs may bloom and flourish in Europe in each of the member state countries and across the world. Thank you so much. Have a nice morning, evening, afternoon, and hopefully to see you again for more information. Join us on the websites of SDSN, Global, SDSN Europe and the member states and of UNITAR, CIFAL Flanders and our colleagues of CIFAL Global Network. Thank you so much and hopefully to see you back.


And the proceedings yesterday were a great example of this. Not a single congressman was actually interested in the answers the CEOs had for their questions. Indeed, the whole format is designed to avoid getting answers. The whole format is designed to give politicians the opportunity for a sound bite and to try to catch these CEOs saying something wrong so they can use it to promote themselves. The whole proceedings were nothing but a circus. A circus designed by politicians for politicians as PR. The idea that any CEO would submit himself to something like this voluntarily is despicable. None of them should have been there. None of them should have agreed. You want to have a real discussion about any of these issues? They should have said, fine. But then I should be allowed to answer the questions. And the questions cannot be yes or no questions because that's not how this world works.  They were constantly told they weren't answering the question. They were constantly told they had run out of time. They were constantly told that, oh no, we just want a yes-no answer when the question was not a yes-no answerable question. It was a disgusting display of not trying to find truth. Not trying to find understanding. Not trying to find enlightenment. But it was the display of sheer power.  Who have produced nothing, created nothing, built nothing, made nothing. Who haven't hired people, haven't bought other companies. Who have no business experience or technology experience. Who have young staffers who tell them maybe how an iPhone works.  A challenging, the geniuses, most productive geniuses of our time? Who are they? They're nobody's. They're nothing's. The fact that we voted them in says a lot about how pathetic we are as a culture, as a people. Somebody says they don't answer the questions. Well of course they don't. They're trick questions. They're not designed to be answered. They're not designed to be answered. They shouldn't be then ever mind answering these losers' questions. They're questions that are loaded in order to trip them over. And they're questions that, you know, they think they're sophisticated because they get into the minutiae of a particular contract or particular event that happened. And expect the CO to remember all that. On live TV, be able to give the answer in a way that they won't regret afterwards. In a way, without consulting the attorney, without consulting the actual document, without consulting the vice president was engaged in it, it was just got your questions to make them look good and to make the businessman look bad. Now this is a long tradition in America, but it is getting worse and worse and worse. It happened to the railroad tycoons back in the 19th century. It happened to JPMorgan in 1913 and famous hearings, famous hearings, that ultimately led us, ultimately led us to establishing a Federal Reserve. It continued in the late 1940s with Howard Hughes. With Howard Hughes, he was accused of committing fraud against the government, which he was never tried for, never found. He was accused, said at least the federal government has some involvement, some reason for them to be interrogating him. But there is video, I meant to find it and show it on the show today, but I didn't have time. There's video of Howard Hughes in front of Congress. And he talks back at them. He doesn't take the BS. He challenges them. Not as well as an Iron Man hero would. But pretty well, I'll give him credit, one of the few businessmen ever to stand up to these bastards. And it truly is some of the most disgusting sites you will see in modern America. And what's more disgusting is that I went on Twitter today looking at what the commentators have to say about this. It's just average people, ordinary people. I just put in big tech. Overwhelming me, overwhelmingly, people sided with the politicians. Overwhelmingly, people were displaying hate towards the CEOs. Angels for last week, thank you. I really, really appreciate that, really appreciate the contribution and your comment. That's why I do this. The anti-trust laws are despicable because they attack the good for being the good. They attack success for being successful. And they should be repealed. It should be the first thing that a good president does would be repealed anti-trust laws. Stephen asked, do you think they go out of fear? Yes, I think partially it's fear. Partially it's a sense of duty. They think they need to answer these questions. And in that sense, it's partially out of a sense of guilt towards a sense of, yeah, maybe the politicians have something. Or maybe the politicians have a point or it's important for me to address them because they're important. But why are they important? They're important because they control me. They have this lever against me. They have this power on me. And that's the thing we'll get to in a second. Who has power here? Why do they call it a congressional hearing? If Congress does all the testifying, are the living out there, Dr. Floyd Ferris moments where they get to torture God? Yes, they're living out the pleasure of torturing people who are better than them. And they know that. They know that. They know these are people who are better than them. There is no argument to break up big tech. No justification. I want to talk about power and then I want to quickly talk about the speech issue, even though I've talked about in the past and my views I think are well known on this. Who has the power here? The power these businessmen have is to trade with other people. It's to sell and buy products. It's to hire and fire people. It's to engage in voluntary contracts. The power they have is to trade. And other parties don't have to trade with them. Nobody can be forced to trade with Amazon, with Google. You don't have to use Google. You don't have to buy from Amazon. Walmart has a quite competent store that you can buy from. Google, you can use Microsoft search engine and there's some encrypted search engines online that keep you completely safe. There's plenty of options. You don't want them tracking you, use a VPN. You don't have to use Facebook. Facebook is not required for human life. And if you want a different social media, you can use Twitter or you can use something else. There's nothing, nothing that requires you to use any of these products. I know people who refuse to use Apple products. They just don't use anything by Apple. Completely possible in this world. All they have is the power to trade with you. That's economic power. It's the essence of economic power. And the more of it, the better. The more they can trade. The more you can choose to trade or not to trade. Political power is very different. The power of those little creepy politicians is that they have a gun. They pass laws. Try not abiding by their laws.  They use physical force against you. I mean, maybe they find you, but what is a fine? Try not paying the fine. They regulate. They control. They intervene. They don't ask our permission. They don't ask our opinion. You know, you don't volunteer. Economic power. Political power is the power to oppress. Is the power to control. Now, cronyism has been brought up. But the fascinating thing about these four companies is they're among the least crony companies in the world. I don't know what's crony about Facebook. What exactly, what government favors that Facebook get? Luckily, the tech business has not been regulated. So, when you don't have regulations, there's not be regulated much. There's not a lot of favors to ask for because government doesn't control your life. What is Amazon? How is Amazon a crony? Now, put aside the government contracts. I don't know about the government contracts. Maybe there's cronyism there. I'm sure there is. But we're talking here about the marketplace, about selling goods. Not about the government contracts. Where is the cronyism? Where is the government protecting them? Where is the government subsidizing them? Where is the government giving them any favors? Well, crony. It's been attacked for antitrust reasons in the past because it dared to sell books and set their own prices. But cronyism? Where's the cronyism? Give me examples. What is laws? Is Apple lobbied for? Oh, Google for that matter. Now, Google spends a lot of money lobbying. A lot of money. But where are these laws that have favored Apple and Google? Mainly, they lobby to keep government off their backs. I mean, there are lots of cronies in the world out there. These four are not your prime example of them. Now, there is this section 230. And a law that was passed in 1994. By the way, 1994, when this law was passed, was before Facebook. It might be before Zuckerberg was even born. He's that young. But it's before Facebook ever existed. They couldn't have lobbied for that. It's before Google ever existed. Google was started in 1998, I think, or 99. Apple was around, but Apple doesn't care because it doesn't affect Apple. Google, Facebook, Apple, who are missing Amazon. Amazon was not around. It didn't exist. There's a provision in that law that allows platforms. And at the time, what they meant by platforms, not Twitter and not Facebook, is neither existed. What they meant at the time was like bulletin boards. What they meant at the time was comment sections. They allowed the platforms to curate, to delete content they found objectionable without being liable for the content they left on the platform. Sounds reasonable to me. Arguably, led to a massive flourishing of the internet in the United States. And the dominance of American companies globally has led to all the great products that you have online today because the companies could delete content like pornography without them being sued for content they left on. The idea was by deleting some content like pornography, you are not therefore endorsing the content you leave on and therefore you can't be sued for it. That is not being a publisher. That's being a curator. Facebook, Twitter, Google, do not publish. What does the New York Times do? New York Times hires reporters. The reporter writes an article. A publisher, an editor at New York Times edits that article. That article is presented to a senior editor. The senior editor says yes or no and edits it further. And then it gets published. That's a publisher. I submit a book proposal to a publisher. They say, yeah, we're interested. Or no, we're not. If they say they are interested, they then edit it. And then they require me, for example, to provide all my footnotes, all my sources because they know they're liable. And when I provide those and when I agree to their edits and they agree to mine and so on, that's a publisher. Facebook's not a publisher. Twitter's not a publisher. Section 230 is not corporate welfare. Section 230 is exactly what the government is supposed to do, which is to help define property rights, to help define the boundaries of what is and isn't liable. It's exactly what it does. And it's exactly appropriate. And it's exactly right. All right, now we're going to take a short break from that to remind you of a few things. There are over 230, there are 238 people watching right now on YouTube. Please like, press the like button. There are only 135 likes, we can easily get that up to 200. It helps the algorithms, helps me rise up and helps get this in front of more people. If you care about that, please like the show and do that. Don't forget to subscribe. Those of you who are not subscribers, don't forget to press the bell button that way you get notification when I go live and you can come and join me. Of course, don't forget if you value what I say, even if you don't agree with everything I say, but if you value what I say, get you thinking, it contributes something to your life, please support the show. Support me financially. Make it possible for me to keep doing this. We now have, you have the ability to support it at $2 all the way up to $500 a month. And you get different perks based on how much you contribute. You can do so on Patreon. You can do so on Subscribestar and you can do so on uranbookshow.com slash support. And, you know, particularly right now, particularly with COVID, particularly with everything going on, I can't do any public speaking. I don't get paid for any public speaking. I have no other source of income for my intellectual content. You're it. So thank you for all my supporters, all my generous contributors.  And by showing me your appreciation, you know, it motivates me to keep going. So thank you and I encourage everybody else who's not a supporter to support the show. All right, they're not a publisher. But aren't they blocking conservative ideas? Aren't they blocking ideas of liberty and which are not the same as conservative, by the way? Aren't they promoting the left? Maybe. I mean, it's interesting. If you go hang out with real crazy leftists, which I don't do, but I've read, I read them stuff online.  And they constantly complain that Facebook and Twitter are two right wing where you were launched, launched just to ask, what is your opinion on big tech acting as publishers while enjoying the protection of wing classified as a platform? I don't know what that means. But I just answered this question like two minutes ago. I just did a whole thing about why they are not acting as publishers at all. You know, gave you exact examples of the difference between, this is a super chat question, that's why I'm relating it to it, gave the differences between what a publisher does at the New York Times or at a book publishing company and what Facebook and Twitter do. It's completely different. It's a completely different function. They're completely within their rights to curate the material on their site without being liable for the stuff they keep on. And if you make them liable for the stuff they keep on, then forget about social media. It's dead. It's finished. And if they have to keep everything on social media, then do they keep pornography? Do they keep ISIS? Do they keep any racist who wants to blabber there? They get to keep everything? Why? Why?  And if you don't like where they draw their line, don't use them. Don't use them. It's unbelievable to me. There are people who claim to be pro-free markets. No. People who claim to be pro-free speech argue that platforms should be told what's speech to allow and what's speech not to allow. I don't allow all speech in my house.  I show you the door and ask you to leave.  I show you the window and encourage you to jump. That was me being funny, by the way. Facebook built a house. You come to their house. There are certain things you can't say. If you don't say it, if you say it, they kick you out. Why is that a problem?  Which means they're going to be biased to the left. Which means they think that certain things said by the right is more offensive. The certain things said by the left that we think is equally offensive. But that's their house. Their property. Their algorithms. They built it. They get to decide who uses it. How it's used. When it's used. They block people that I wouldn't block. They do a lot of things I wouldn't do. I want the iPhone in a different color. But Apple won't produce in a different color. How dare they not do what I want? And sure. There is a danger that if these platforms become block huge swaths of opinions. What will happen if you think that happens? People will go and establish new platforms. They will compete. But that danger is the danger of being alive. That danger is a danger of having a free market. That danger is a danger of being alive. Of living in freedom. Liberty is not risk-free. You want risk-free? Die. It's the only thing that has no risks involved in it. Non-certainty.  You're gone. You're finished. There's no problems. It's all gone. Living is risky. You don't like Facebook's decisions about who they deplatform. Fight them. Not with force. Fight them with ideas. Argue against it. Start a new platform. Switch. Leave. Go to Twitter. You don't like Twitter's decision? Go to what's the new one? Paula. Go to Paula. If you believe in breaking up Facebook and Twitter, then your anti-liberty, anti-capitalism, anti-freedom, if you believe in regulating their speech, then your anti-free speech, it's their speech because it's their platform. They can have any political views they want. They can enforce whatever political views they want. They can do whatever they want. It's theirs. Have they violated your rights? No. You don't have a right, a free speech on other people's property. Free speech, the first amendment, guarantees that the government does not abridge your ability to publish and speak. The government, they're not the government. They're Facebook. They have every right to prevent you from speaking if they don't like what you're saying. That's the system of government we have. That's the beauty of the American system. It's about property rights. On your property, you can say whatever you want. On my property, you cannot. Now, let me just give you an historical example of this. In the 1970s, in the 1970s, there were only three television stations that produced news. There was no CNN. There was no Fox. There was no MSNBCC, NBC Fox Business, all these others. There were three, ABC, NBC, CBS. That's it. All of them, by the way, run by leftists. All of them biased. And there was no internet. No internet. I know it's hard to imagine. I know some of you don't really believe me. But there really wasn't an internet in the 1970s. And the newspapers, those New York Times and Washington Post, basically run by leftists. I remember complaining about the New York Times being biased to the left in the 60s and 70s. There were laws that said that if you're going to have a liberal, a leftist point of view, you need to have a conservative point of view. And they would try to implement that. But it was a joke. It was a joke. Because why just those two and why not other points of view? Are these the best of the two? It was just ridiculous. But because of the dominance of the left, the right supported this and passed this. And because the airwaves were considered public property, there was this requirement that they be fair and balanced. By the way, stop the super chats and let's it's big money because there are way too many. And I'm already at an hour, 20 minutes. So we have to slow down here. You'll have another opportunity on Saturday to ask me more. And maybe some of these questions will have to hold over until then. You know, we survived. We survived. Did the New York Times filter out conservative points of view? Sure. Did ABC, CBS, NBC? Yes, sure. Were they biased? Sure. Did Ronald Reagan get elected? Yeah, absolutely. You complain today when you have a gazillion sources of news, a gazillion sources of commentary, a gazillion places to publish your stuff, a gazillion places to have conversations. There's never been an error in all of human history ever where people have had more opportunities to speak, to talk, to debate, to discuss, to bring up new ideas, to debate those new ideas. Free of censorship, free of control. The very fact that you are all listening to this on YouTube, owned by Google, that Google, in their great benevolence, allows me to use this platform for free. They charge me nothing. They even, they even, this is amazing to me, they even go out of their way to try to go and get ads to put on my shows so I can make a little bit of money off of ad revenue.  I'm not sure but the New York Times has never said their leftist. ABC, CBS, NBC in the 70s never said their leftist. They don't think of themselves as leftist anymore. The Fox thinks of themselves as rightist. What is their slogan? We're fair and balanced. Really? Are they fair and balanced? BS. The right wing TV show. TV station. Always happy. So what are you talking about? If YouTube tomorrow kicked me off of the platform, I would say thank you for the years of allowing me to use your platform for free. They don't owe me anything. What have I done for them? And they're not the government. They don't owe me some kind of respect of something. Their platform, their rules, they think I violated their rules. I mean, what I would like all these platforms to do is have clear definitions of their standards so we could all understand when we violate the rules. I think that is missing. But that's a business decision. And somebody should start a platform with clear objective rules. But you know what? Jordan Peterson tried. You know, Dave Rubin has locals. Great. All good platforms. But you know one of the challenges that Jordan Peterson really had is how do you decide what is acceptable speech and what is not? Because even Jordan Peterson doesn't want some people on his platform. Everybody has to have some standards. You don't like the standards that Facebook has embraced. Then leave. Leave, leave, leave. You don't like Twitter. Leave. But it's their platform. They get to determine the standards. You don't follow the standards. Even if they're vague and ambiguous, they kick you off. If they violate a contract, sue them. If they violate a contract, sue them.   That's a violation of free speech. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. All right, before we go on, reminder. Please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now. 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show.  But at least the people who are liking it, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes. But if you like it, don't just sit there. Help get the show promoted. Of course, you should also share. And you can support the show at youronbrookshow.com slash support on Patreon or Subscribestar or locals and show your support for the work, for the value. Hopefully you're receiving from this.  You'll know what shows are on, when they're on. You'll get notified. So yes, like, share, subscribe, support. Like, share, subscribe, support. So easy. Do one, all of those, please.