 We have convened our colleagues and our friends from Europe today to discuss what are some of the opportunities for our community, for the sustainable development community to help and to support the alignment of both the European Recovery Plan as well as the European semester process with the SDGs. So as you all know, the European Commission as well as the European Council have recognized the dramatic consequences of the pandemic and they have reached a historic agreement to address these consequences with this European Recovery Plan. This plan seeks to address the immediate crisis but also to lay the foundations for a more resilient and more sustainable Europe. We think that this objective will be successful if it provokes a transformation of the region that is aligned with the SDGs. The annual sustainable growth strategy of 2021 that was recently published also underlines this factor but it's true that there are many questions about how this can be operationalized. And so today we've lined up a fantastic panel to discuss these processes and help us understand some of the nitty gritty of them as well as some of the opportunities again for our community to help in this alignment. So before I give the floor to our panelists, let me just explain how the next hour and a half is going to work and then give you some housekeeping tips. So we have three panelists that will take the floor first. And then we're going to open our floor for three of the chairs of our European networks that will give us some local insights about some of the conversations and the discussions that are taking place in their countries and how their respective member states are drafting their recovery and resilience plans. And then hopefully we'll have time for questions from the audience. So we're going to encourage you to use the chat function where you can type your questions and we're going to be looking at those throughout the morning and asking our panelists on our chairs. We may have time at the very end to give someone also the microphone to ask one or two questions. So to do that, I believe that you have to go to participants and then you will see an opportunity to raise your hand. So let me get started by introducing our panelists today. So we have Estelle Goegger from member of the cabinet of the Economic Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni from the European Commission. We have Jorge Nunez Ferrer from Research, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for European Policy Studies, the CEPs. And we have Eloise Bodin, Policy Analyst from the Institute for European and Environmental Policy. So we're going to get started with you Estelle. I believe that you want to share your screen. Please go ahead and see. Fantastic. Recordingly seeing your email though. Good morning everyone. I hope the presentation will eventually open. It's taking a good time and it works to be slow. Can you see the presentation? Yes, we can. Thank you. Everything working? Perfect. So well, first of all, thank you very much for the invitation and for the opportunity to discuss the recovery in those units facility, its interaction with the European semester, and more specifically how it will contribute to the achievement of the SDGs, and how we could currently look at how to improve our work towards the operationalization of this aim of having this key instrument participating to our contributing to the achievement of the SDGs. This is the recovery in residence facility. Well, it is actually the cornerstone of the recovery plan that was put forward by the Commission in May this year, and that was endorsed in broad principles by the European Council in July. The recovery in residence facility actually constitutes 90% of the 750 billion recovery package under the type to the name next generation EU. It's made up of 312 billion of grants and 360 billion of loans. So it's a very large scale financial support instrument that is supposed to finance both public investments in key priority fields, and also to support reforms. The focus really has been put on the twin transitions so the green and the digital transitions. And, but it is also in broader terms supposed to foster the resilience of the EU, and to reduce economic and social divergences. And it complements other instruments or programs of the MFF toolbox or of the recovery package, such as for instance we are to you and Shure, so this is Shure is this short term work scheme support program at EU level that actually is the first one division under Shure to place earlier this week, and we're a great success and little clarification, which is that the recovery in residence facility is still in the legislative process. And we have to be clear that the great and historic European Council conclusions in the agreement after four days of negotiations in July, and sets the broad lines, but then the underlying programs are sexual proposals are still in legislative discussions and we should not by any mean forget the role of the European Parliament, both in the negotiations of the MFF, and also of the recovery and resilience facility. Also, because I think that when it comes to SDGs, for instance, the European Parliament might give an additional push into that direction. So, the MFF will be fully embedded in the European semester cycle, because it is based on national plans that each member state should put forward. And these plans should be aligned with the semester cycle in terms of timing and also the main documents. So, the MFF plans should actually be aligned or be merged with the national recovery with the plans that the member states put forward, usually under the semester. The deadline would be the 30th of April, and they're supposed to implement the kind of specific recommendations that the member states had been receiving over the previous years, mostly 2019 and 2020. You might have noticed that the CSRs in 2020 were very much focused on the response to the crisis and contained or had a main focus on investing and supporting the health sector and fighting unemployment. So, I will later show for 2021 really the impact of the RRF on the semester timeline, but so the link, as I said, is that the recovery and resilience plans will become the main reference document from the state policy initiatives. What changes compared to the usual semester exercise is that the plans are multi-annual. They are aligned with the duration of the RRF, and so we are not in a manual cycle of measures that are proposed and that are then monitored, but in a purely annual dimension. And to account for this, the semester will be temporarily adapted. And so, and streamlined also a bit, so as to avoid duplications or overlaps with the traditional rendezvous dates of the semester. So, we encourage the member states to submit their national reform programs and the recovery and resilience plans in a single integrated document, so this will be merged somehow. And for 2021, the assessment of the commission of the plans that have been submitted by member states will replace actually the count reports and that it will be accompanied by a more analytical document of the commission. And this package will then be put forward to council for endorsement. And it's the endorsement by council that then triggers first disbursements. So, there won't be next year country specific recommendations because we will just have adopted hopefully if we manage to be in time with the kind of timing that we have planned. We will just have adopted member states recovery and resilience plans, so it wouldn't make sense to at the same time issue country specific recommendations, telling member states what type of reforms to do, what investments to do what initiatives to take, when they have just committed to a multi annual program. So, there will be a CSR next year, there will however be recommendations on the budgetary side, and we will continue monitoring macroeconomic imbalances, rather with a perspective of new risks arising also under the effects of the crisis. And here you can see how this will completely look like. And so the first notable difference is that we have anticipated the SGS we have detached it from the traditional auto package, which will be issued on the 18th of November. So the ASGS, which really sets usually the tone and is an economic analysis of the current economic context and that sets a bit just the tone for the forthcoming year. This has been anticipated so as to feed into member states reflections and preparations of their recovery and resilience plans. For the for the following reason, which is that we invite member states to present us already now as of mid October, at the same time when they present their draft budget plans. So we invite them to present a first draft or their reflections for their forthcoming recovery and resilience plan. The idea is that we start in the process of discussion and exchange between commission and member states, where we can guide them towards the final drafting of their plans as to ensure that when we eventually receive it, the adoption will be as quick as possible. So as to allow the first money, the refinancing, for instance, is to be discussed. But then I mean the rest of the auto package due on the 18th of November remains the same. So we will have the alert mechanism report. We will have the joint employment report. We will have the euro recommendation. What apparently I have been informed that will be delayed a bit, but for reasons that are not really linked to the RF is the single market reports that might be delayed a bit. And then you can see that as we advance, usually in February, we will have the country reports this year. We won't later we wouldn't have the country recommendation country specific recommendations here again in 2021. We won't have this because by then member states will have submitted their plans. We will have a system and hopefully they will have been endorsed and then the cycle of implementation of these plans will start at members. It's still up. Sorry to interrupt you one second. Now, what do you think? Yes. Yes. So we're seeing a black box on the right of the screen, which I think is because you might have the panellists open. Could you could you close it? Yes. See if that helps. Exactly. Is this better or not? Fantastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wonderful. That, that's all good. Thanks. Okay, fine. Sorry. And now the link between the RF and the SDGs can really be seen in the policy objectives that are followed by the RF. So I already mentioned the twin transitions so the green and the digital dimension, which are really core elements of the RF. And we have suggested that 37% of the expenditure foreseen by member states under the plan have to go or to be related to climate. And then we've set another target, which is 20% for the digital transition. So 20% of member states plans will have to address the digital transition. So I've listed or here you see listed some of the elements that would fall for instance under the green component. And I've tried to match this really with the SDGs. So for instance, the carbonizing the industry would contribute to the achievement treatment of SDGs 7, 9 and 13. So for example, the industry like economy, we have the improvement of environmental infrastructure biodiversity sustainable mobility. And here for instance, sustainable mobility it's the electric charging stations for instance when we really encourage the development of this type of infrastructure. And then of course we have the reduction of emissions. So I really tried always to match the relevant SDG. And you see that it's more it's various it's multiple. It's different SDGs that are covered by the plan and so by this important financing tool, we will have the means to contribute towards SDGs. And the same applies to the digital transition where he as well. So I think that there's a sense of reforms that improve connectivity, help develop digital skills, or improve cybersecurity, all of these they also contribute to the SDGs, and not only to SDG number eight which would be for instance the more classical idea because it's about economic development. No also SDGs like fighting inequalities or promoting gender equality. They also are addressed by elements such as digital skill development. There is of course also the social dimension and here as it is embedded into the European semester and focus is also or should be an implementation tool of previous countries specific recommendations. This means that the European people of social rights of course also has an important role. And so elements such as ensuring equal opportunities, investing into education, inclusiveness, fair working conditions. All of these, and then especially I mean treated by the crisis and ensuring high quality care health care services. All of these also contribute to SDGs. What is however maybe missing a bit specifically regarding SDGs. And this is where a discussion like the one we're going to have today is very important is this matching and flagging exercise that I now did. Tagging or indicating the link between our organization and specific SDGs. This is something that for the moment indeed we haven't reflected enough upon I say very transparently. And where we will need to see how we can do this flagging exercise. And I think that that's the intrinsic nature of which is that the amounts are this course only upon completion of milestones and targets. So the member states plans will set out actions but also always a calendar for implementation and targets. And so the envelope that is reserved for a member state is really diverse upon completion of these milestones. And I think that this monitoring exercise, maybe we have to progress towards SDGs and towards the achievement of improvement towards SDGs. So this is something where very transparently I have to say that we are not very far yet. Probably also due to the fact that RF was prepared and designed well as a response to the crisis and a bit in crisis management mode. So we are still in the legislative process but at the same time to be able to implement the instrument as quickly as possible so as to ensure that the money reaches member states on the ground as quickly as possible. We are also already thinking about implementation. And sometimes it's difficult to really concede the next step ahead or, well, to take a bit of a higher look on things. And I think that typically on SDGs there is a need for this exercise to be done and to see how to better link the RF actions to the member states plans to the milestones to the SDGs. This is again on to the assessment upon achievement of the milestones. So what we will assess actually prior to the disbursements at the stage where we receive the draft plans is whether yes or no they address the conference specific recommendations that have been issued to member states. And here, it will be difficult to expect member states to address all of the recommendations they had received, but at the same time, they cannot just pick and choose and decide to disregard, I don't know, I take a random example, recommendations. Some of the states might have received on aggressive tax planning for instance, we will be careful that there is really a right balance as to the CSRs that are being addressed. We will then of course look as to whether the green and digital transitions are being addressed, whether the actions described in the plans are credible when it comes to meeting the 37 and 20% packet. And we will also look at the balance with a social dimension, because I know that in the public discourse, there's a lot of focus on climate and green lately, but we have to ensure that the social dimension doesn't get lost on the way. And I think that for these reasons, it's important that the commission is not seen as just an agent that will issue bonds on the markets and then just transfer money to member states and then they use it a bit in the way they want. The commission really has the role to steer, guide, advise and ensure the quality of these plans that the investments really serve a transformative agenda investments into the future, and make sense also not taking individually that we have 27 plans that will enable member states maybe to compete with each other, but rather that the overall collective dimension serves really the union as a whole. So this is the ambition. It will be a lot of work. We are still waiting for the final legal base and see what kind of adjustments the parliament might bring. The trial will start towards the end of the year. Meanwhile, we have still to start preparing and here again as I said today's discussion will be very useful for us to see how to better operationalize to link with the SDGs. Thank you. Thank you very much Estelle that was super insightful and I think gave us a lot of information about where the processes at and what are some of the question marks that are still pending at your end that the at the European institutions level, and it's very interesting to hear that you think the parliament may push even further with the SDGs and that the evaluation of the progress towards milestone may even be against the benchmark of the SDGs so this is this is very interesting. Let's go to the floor now to Jorge Nunez and he has written a number of papers on what makes the deal this this package so so interesting so historical and and and also what are some of the things that we need to read between the lines. So over to you. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me here. So I would like to discuss a bit about the steps from here forward. It was quite an historical decision to create the recovery and resilience facility has been quite difficult path but it shows that the system works even if it's there are tensions of course not easy decisions to take to create such a financial support at that level. Now we're discussing the contents. And that is what I'm going to put now my my finger. I mean I have many years working on strategic development plans on issues of national funds regional and also you know the rule development plans. And there are the ambitions and reality that has to be taken into account and there are the lessons from also from the financial crisis which I think we have not really learned completely. And I've been also looking at public accounts stability and sustainability. This means that now we are having this very large support that to some extent is even trying to correct and then that's why the word resilience appears mistakes done during the financial crisis but some not necessarily the mistakes that some people have in their minds. So I found that the presentation I mean that we just heard this. I find it correct there are words there that are very important and the words implementation and targeting and measuring are important. The and I have nothing against having sustainable development goals and moving in that direction. I also work with the climate and energy unit and we work on the transition and reducing emissions but we really have to be very attentive is what we're going to do with this this support. When the financial crisis hit. We had an enormous amount of actions to with governments which had taken over what was very much a private sector financial sector debt issue. And they started to a program that was of course looking at austerity trying to keep their expenditures and there was an issue in this because they were looking at the economic sustainability. And they say that tried to to bring the economy on average and sustainable or to a growth path or whatever you want. They wanted to stop decline, but it lacked issues of social sustainability. And another issue that was missing is how to how to reach the sustainability which also required in several countries. But I would say structure reform what is interesting to look at that period is to see that some countries are effectively much more indebted that the actual impact in the economy from in that part of in depth that mess of liability increases the liabilities that took the governments over where generated more return. And the actual liabilities. This you had 20 something countries in this direction, then you had the group of countries that took enormous liabilities and debt, and the actual return of this liabilities and that was extremely low. Practically nothing. So in other words you only had that, but you didn't have actually an impact to recover it or to handle it. Yes, I wonder if we can do this again. It means that a lot of countries have to really be considering how to focus on sustainability on digital on green on social. Taking into account that the actual economic model has to be sustainable in in all of its pillars, including the economic one. Because we are facing a public debt crisis, not the debt crisis, but the public debt crisis is something years ago that I was already concerned several of us were concerned that we may move from a debt crisis to a public debt crisis and I can tell you that's not very nice. Because then you put the monetary stability also into in trouble. And I'm a bit concerned that there are a lot of people thinking now that there are modern monetary ways to just continue churning out money without having an impact in that sense and that's not true. And there are several reasons I cannot go into it. This will be taking very long. But it is very important that countries are looking at the sustainability also in the sense not only of trying to address every single one of the sustainable developments, but what do you get out of them. Because we have, I have seen people looking at the programs that are coming out and saying oh they have put more on sustainability point one and more on five but less on three unless you don't, you don't do. You cannot do all of them at the same time, and not all of them has the same urgency. So there is a need to to target. We cannot target the whole forest for getting the most risky parts into it. We need to have focus and for the moment, all the programs sound very good when you read what I saw recently I see programs they have all the right words now the implementation will be the serious part that's not ready yet how it will be done, and how it will be that after that the process will become really resilient. And it's not an environmental and social only it's also the ability to maintain that over time without having the crisis the social is very important. And there again I come, there are many calls to take action like saying polluter pay taxation that's fine if you have tax, something to create some tax neutrality so something else changes, because with the depth increases. You don't have the urgency to have new polluter paid taxes, no changes otherwise, and the, the taxpayers and, and the consumers pay for it. We have to be aware of the consequences we had the g legion, you know, if you remember it was when there was a tax on that everybody says it's so good this on petrol. Be really careful how we do the strategies and this will be a very, very hard job in the next few years. Very tough one. And we have to take to make sure that we target the right priorities and quickly, we do have an emission priority that has to be targeted, but this doesn't mean that we have to go in there I see a lot of, a lot of measures, jumping going into the bandwagon, as if they were related to climate coven and they are very distantly and sometimes not urgent at all that we are pushing for that. And some, and there are countries that are going into an election what I wonder if they will manage to actually incorporate the necessarily structural reforms. Without finding themselves in some years that they cannot handle their own, their own debt problems. So that's what I'm, I would like to mention this because I'm sure that the next speakers will speak about the good parts of the sustainable development goals and saying sustainable development goals are a guide. They're very useful that we need to prioritize and we need to monitor very closely and this is my last point is about monitoring. We have a lot of goals that we cannot really measure. And it is very, very important that we are able to introduce and use quickly as much as possible big data and data systems we are not there yet to be able to look what we are really doing on the ground. Are we really sustainable with what we are doing. Are we not are we improving something because some of them we believe we are doing something that may not be related it's important to be able to measure and for that. So we work a lot on following and monitoring and really having indicators that tell us what we're what we're doing. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jorge and you give me the opportunity to to mention two things so as the SN drafted a framework to understand the SDGs in terms of deep transformations and for governments to align both investments. So if you think about regulatory challenges and to organize cross sectoral ministries work, etc. You can find the six transformation framework in our website. I will give a lot of importance indeed to monitoring so we have recently launched an SDG today platform where you can see up to date data on the SDGs but most importantly we will be launching very soon our European sustainable development report that analyzes the achievements and the and the performance of the EU as well as each of the countries with very, very, very sophisticated graphics too. And in fact, our colleague Estelle from IEP is collaborating in the drafting of this report. So Estelle I'm going to hand over to you. As soon as you're ready. Fantastic. Yes. Okay, great. Thank you very much. I'll share my screen. Okay, and I hope that you can see. Okay, great. Thank you very much and thank you very much for for inviting me today for this interesting webinar. So I'm a policy analyst at the Institute for European environmental policy. We produce evidence based policy analysis on on EU policymaking and we've been doing a lot of work on EU governance mainstreaming SDGs in policymaking, but also now of course a lot of work on the economic recovery how how to ensure that it's green and sustainable. And that's how I'll start my presentation. When we saw what would be the impacts of COVID-19 on the economy, we've partnered with with European think tanks that work on sustainability, and we came up with five tests for the European Union and member states recovery packages. What would be the five criteria to ensure that the packages and the investments are sustainable. The first criteria is the sound scientific basis. We need to ensure that the public spending is effective and listen to scientists when planning the funds. The criteria to is resilience. So addressing vulnerability at its very root. The recovery plans should strengthen not only economic but also social ecological resilience to cope with the multiple shocks because as we know COVID-19 is not going to be the only crisis that we face. And there's no need to to make trade offs between the economic social and ecological aspects. The third criteria is equity and solidarity. So ensure that those funds prioritize vulnerable households communities regions and countries in the EU. And then transformation, the recovery plans need to to lead to new sustainable practices and technologies it's an opportunity to transform society. So now it is still unclear how much funding will be dedicated to green neutral or brown measures both in the EU and the member states although there is of course already some rules around it but we need to ensure that there is enough funds that go into sustainable investments. So where are we now with COVID-19 we can say that there's been some big changes in the semantics and in the in the principles of the European Union, the growth and stability pact has been put aside with the crisis. And as it was mentioned by Estelle, now the semester the monitoring fiscal economic mechanism are changing. The annual sustainable growth survey said that now DRF is rooted in the semester and that competitive sustainability and cohesion will form the new growth strategy that the European Green Deal will be at the heart of the recovery. And that's a vocabulary of competitive sustainability and resilience is quite new. It's coming with Ursula von der Leyen and the new commission but it was not the case previously. The commission also presented the four dimensions of competitive sustainability so economic stability social fairness, environmental sustainability and productivity and competitiveness. So that's that's a big change and the recommendations made to member states as part of the semester process have really evolved and they're less macroeconomic focused now they also look at the social and environmental spheres, which is a positive change. So the guidelines that have been given to member states as part of the recovery plan. Well, the funds that they will use need to promote the union's economic social and territorial cohesion, strengthen economic and social resilience mitigate the social and economic impact of the crisis and support the green and digital transitions. This has been said by Estelle, but those are very positive moves. So with the COVID crisis also there is a major change in governance and an increased power to the European Commission to push for structural reform. Of course, connecting the RF to the European semester, but also the creation of the reform, which is a digital that will now help you countries carry out reforms that will determine to support job creation and sustainable growth. So now going into the European semester because we've been we've been doing quite some work on this in the past year and and how can SDGs been be mainstream in the in the process. So the European semester is the annual cycle of economic and fiscal policy coordination within the European Union. And it has evolved quite a lot because Ursula van der Leyen committed to to mainstream SDGs into the process. And now there is an annex that assessed the member states performance on SDGs in the country specific recommendations. And we saw that there was a shift away from the mantra of growth within the European Commission in the past few months. And as there is no overall SDG strategy in the European Union, the semester can really be a key instrument to operationalize the SDGs because it has an overarching look on the policies that are taken by member states. So we worked on on on creating an environmental sustainability scoreboard that could be put within the European semester because although the tool needs to stay focused of course on the economy can fiscal aspects sustainable economy could be put into the semester cycle. So we created eight dimensions of sustainable economy, which are the size of the green economy, long term sustainability of the economy, sustainable public finance, green incentives, tax and subsidies, measuring green air Indian innovation, sustainable industry climate change risk and spillover effects. And this could be measured measured by 15 existing indicators that are already being measured by your stat, and they would form this environmental sustainability scoreboard that could be improved over time with new indicators for instance public funding for just transition. This could create synergies with the already existing social scoreboard and could introduce a concept of sustainable well being economy for all, which is something that is already being more and more pushed forward in the institutions. Now on the thing with the European semester is that of course there is still some implementation gap, although the country specific recommendations are taken very seriously there's still implementation gap at all level in the EU policymaking. And the 2017 environmental implementation review showed that the implementation gap was partly due to lack of integration and policy coherence within member states. That's also why a guiding framework like the SDGs is quite useful. But what was shown is that there is a lack of capacity and or coordination amongst competent authorities at the member state level. And that's partly due because there's lots of different processes and only on sustainability and environment we see that there's lots of different processes to European semester but do the environmental action plan European Green Deal environmental implementation review, lots of different processes that can be confusing for member states, and that's what is still was actually mentioning. We need to coordinate the recommendations the monitoring processes and we need to pick the right indicators and targets and of course that's that's the challenge that we're going to face on the side of the environment. Some indicators will be chose by the Commission for the environmental action plan. This is going to be very important, but we need to make sure that there's more coordinated timeline. And at IEP we will soon publish a paper on that topic. So yes there is the need to align funding incentives compliance mechanism to support greater policy coherence for sustainable development at the member state level, but also to enhance democratic support, because the citizens are not aware of all those processes. And if there was key targets, if there was a more transparent processes probably they could be more involved in all of that. Finally, what we've seen is that it would make a lot of sense to have an independent assessment of the recovery plans, and this could be done, maybe by the European Court of Auditors. If they have an extended mandate, but it would be, it would be something relevant. So I'll stop here. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Because we're running a bit out of time I'm just going to ask our chairs to turn on their cameras. To introduce them we have Adolf Kloheleis from the chair of our SDSN German Network. We have Angelo Riccaboni joining from SDSN Mediterranean and representing our Italian network too. And we have Fivi Conduri from SDSN Greece and also the chair of our internal working group on the European Green Deal. So Adolf I'm going to give the floor to you first. Okay, thank you Maria. Good morning, everybody. And thank you for so many who joined us this morning in particular to the panelists in the first round of our discussion that was very, very insightful. I would like to give some grain of caution and all to this. So actually we have a fundamental shift in the narratives. If we compare the way the commission president talked about the future of the union last year and this year you'll see that the SDGs moved on the back burner in a way so that it was not mentioned in the in the address on the state of the union at all. And also the sustainable growth strategy mentioned the SDG just once. We need to be aware of this that the crisis is changing the overall narrative and the sustainable development community. We have to find a way to deal with it. And secondly, you see that mirrored in the small print. The small print doesn't follow the sermons. And with the common agricultural policy and the political consensus achieved in Brussels the last days. Also the commission working papers on the recovery plans. Don't mention the SDGs ones. We actually use a completely different narrative with this reshape and rescale and reskill is all nice, but it's even not linked in the language to the Green Deal so sort of a Babylonian confusion is emerging. And I think that is very, very important for political communication that we stick to a limited number of key messages around the SDGs around the transformations. And maybe the six developed by SDSN or the handful of transformations under the Green Deal, but actually we need to focus on these things. Focus is then my third point. I think some of the speakers have rightly pointed out that we need to focus all this. There's a risk that stimulus trickles away in a myriad of channels and levels of governments without any long term impacts. The problem will be that without reforms and structural adoption, structural reforms, all the spending we are doing now. If it does not get to the future, the next generation will pay twice. Firstly, pay because they have to repay the debt. And secondly, because the money wasn't used in a way that helps with the sustainable future. When it comes to Germany, actually, and that takes up a little is the last point, there is no public debate on how to link the recovery plan with the sustainable development goals. We have a list of around 20 off track indicators under the German Sustainable Development Strategy indicators from our own targets that are off track, sometimes heavily on track. There's no public debate whether these could actually lead the way how to design the recovery program. There's a tendency to refinance existing programs. Obviously, Germany as a net contributor to all this may think, well, we have just 20 billion to get off it, we have to pay maybe 100. So let's use the money in a way to bring down our public debt again. Let's take a look at France, this program France Relance doesn't do any reference to the SDGs or to the Green Deal, although it splits the amount of 100 billion, more or less equally to the ecological dimension, the economic dimension to social dimension. So in substance, there's a lot in it, but we need an explicit reference to the goals the EU had set for itself, and to monitor it along these indicators. And for us as the sustainable development community, I think we have to do two things. The one is, we need to show that making reference to the SDGs and to the key transformations is actually helpful with the recovery plans. It is not just the claim, please allocate some SDG numbers to some program items. No, we need to show that reorienting all these towards the transformations rolled out in the Green Deal and rolled out under the sixth transformation would really help with the quality of the program. And the second point is in my last point, and referring again to what Louise just said, we need to engage in the public debate about all these things. There is only limited stakeholder involvement with the European semester so far. Some of the trade unions business associations are involved in that process. I just learned from our ministry of finance that some sort of consultation is planned for early 2021 on on the recovery plan, but it's not clear so far whether the sustainable community sustainable development community is actually involved in this. I think, going forward from our meeting today we actually need to make sure that we engage in our respective member states with our governments with the commission representations to make them to make clear with them what we actually see as necessary in this context. Thank you. Thank you very much out of those were fantastic points before I give the floor to our next chair at Angelo. For those of you joining us that don't know how we work at SDSN we are a member based organization we have 1400 members around the world. Not only in universities but also research centers in NGOs, in particular in Europe we have 310 members that cover up to 22 countries from the 27. And these these members organize themselves around networks I should have said this before giving the floor but our networks are represented here today and they work generating knowledge and evidence to policy for policymakers. With the support of the SDGs. They, they also draft these very rigorous long term pathways on sustainable development and they also work on data so what are the data needs to really understand whether we're making progress to targets and at what And then finally our networks to what Adolf has said they educate on sustainable development and the SDGs, not just academically but also by creating these spaces of discussion by bringing together different stakeholders to work together and to identify opportunities for pushing this agenda forward. So, once again we have here three representatives and Angelo from SDSN Mediterranean but also represented in SDSN Italy. I'll give you the floor now. Yeah, thanks everybody. I'm intervening also on behalf of Sabina Rattich or the Italian network. And, as you said, SDSN is a very, very well represented in Europe. So, my remark, the remark I share with Sabina is about what we should do because I mean challenges in front of us are clear. But I think that we need to talk about which can be the contribution of SDSN networks to the process in front of us, because as you said we have more than 200 members from 22 counties we have data analysis we have education programs research. So I would refer to a few points just to be clear. First one, because it was clear also from the presentations before that we need to work more on targets and indicators related to the SDGs and the six transformations and both in the planning activity, but also in the monitoring activity. So we should see how we can really contribute to a major focus on targets, SDGs, numbers, and that is something that we should do. We can do it. We needed to push our internal debate, but also European debate on these. Again, both in the planning phase and in monitoring phase. And I think from what I heard that in particular it is needed a contribution in the social sphere, because as usual there are, there's more attention and more focus on the environmental side, but we need also to be more explicit and more able to find clear targets also in the social side. So this is the first area where we could give a contribution. Second contribution, I mean it is called next generation you and I have not heard to talk about youth. I mean, we are taking 360 billion loans from our children. I mean, so we need to be sure that in the national plans, there is room and attention to youth, because I mean everything is done for them, but we need to be sure about it. And also we need to be sure about the issue of gender equality, because as we know COVID is particularly harm women. So I think that these two issues of youth and gender equality are particularly important and we need to be sure that we are able to contribute to the right direction to these two issues. Third, at the same time, I know it is difficult. Our perspective is that a holistic approach is always needed. So, I understand that we need to give priority priorities at the same time, we need to be able to achieve a global and holistic view. Again, I know it is difficult, but we cannot lose this holistic perspective. Fourth, it was cited by that we should be able to promote it, the lens of resilience. Resilience is a concept completely new for our internal debate. We need to bring in the national debate more and more the importance of resilience as a new compass for EU, but also for national practices. Fifth, I mean, given the importance given to knowledge in the national debate, but also in the European debate, there's not much room for universities and research centers. I think it's something that we need to advocate. There should be greater involvement of universities or research centers. I don't see any debate and any contribution or any request on it. The last one point is that we know that there is a clear reference to digital. Digital is important, but we need to bring to the debate and to the national plans. The purpose of this digital, I mean, it's not that we want to have digital just to have access to Netflix, which is important, but also we want to have digital for greater social integration to link and not decide who are areas with cities to give a social, sorry, healthy services to people in an easier way. I mean, I think that we tend to lose the sense of purpose, which is the reason why we are doing it. So these are the six points. So here, with only one more issue that I leave to our friends of SDSN both at European global level. We need to define a stable dialogue with our members of parliaments in Europe and in national. So we should as SDSN EU to work more closely. So I think that we should define a platform or a way to work together because if we work only separately, we will never get any results. I leave it saying we should do something more structure in order to influence our national and international debate. If we work by ourselves alone, I think we will not get any results. If we work together, we can reach a major result. Thank you very much. I don't know if Sabina would like to add something, but otherwise I close here. Thank you very much. Let's see if Sabina wants to jump in. Oh, I thank you everybody here I am just to say thanks. It gives a lot of sense to Angelo because I think it gives an overview of our points, a very complete overview. So if there is some, I could have maybe something also to the debate the following discussion with our chair, with our chairs. It's feasible, I mean, thank you everybody. Thank you so much, Sabina. So I'll give the floor now to Phoebe Konduli joining us from SDSN Green. Thank you, Maria. And thanks to everybody, the very articulate speeches and the interventions by Angelo and Adolf. They were all very important. And I want to start from where Angelo wants to stop. Yes, we need to work closer together. The SDGs of Europe in order to identify synergistic pathways that will allow us to have an impact in our countries and at the European level as a whole. It's very important and I agree. And I also agree with Adolf that we need to invest time and effort in influencing and streamlining. I will even say training and educating our policy makers and politicians towards building these proposed plans that will be funded by the recovery and resilient fund. These are very, very important points. And I think it's our duty to do something about this, because most countries that I've collaborated with, but also at the European level behind the scenes confess to lack of capacity for producing really resilient recovery plans. Now, with regards to what I would like to say in terms of the work of SDSN, I will briefly refer again to the senior working group for the energy transition and the six transformations to achieve the SDGs and support the European Green Deal. This is a working group that is drafted by senior members at the Athens University of Economics and Business, the annual foundation, the International Energy Agency, University College London, University of Rome and so on, but also aims to send very soon this first trap to all all European SDSN, national and regional hubs and start a conversation in order to refine the document, but in also in order to streamline our engagement with regards to how we want to support the enjoying implementation of the recovery and resilient plan, the European Green Deal, the SDGs and the country specific recommendations per state, but also upscale at the U11. And I am happy to say that some of the things that have been already recommended by the three initial speakers are already done in this report. We have a country specific 3D mapping of the SDGs achievement based on the SDSN index and dashboard where as you all know by now we have explicit quantification of the achievement of each and every SDG. We, these three D mapping also includes a European Green policies, so how European Green policies align with the SDGs, how they align with the next generation EU, and how they align with the Hans 7 and 5. And on top of this, we also have the alignment of the European semester process recommendation. So for each country, we have a profile of alignment of these three different policy framework that thank God are quite consistent between them. And we want to use this 3D mapping in order to use it as a basis for constructing recommendation for investment pathways that will be funded by the recovery resilient fund by the Hans MFF and by the European Green Deal. And these investment pathways will be arranged will be grouped according to the six transformations that have been suggested by the SDGs that is by UN SDSN that is investments in health, education, decarbonization, food production and luncheon management, sustainable communities and digitalization. So the idea is to offer for discussion between us and then when the national hubs of UN SDSN confirmed this, we can also diffuse it as a tool for policymaker in our nation states and also presented at the European Commission level. I should note that in this report we identify not just investment pathways and how this can be supported by portfolios of funding sources, but we also identify the implications for job creation and just transition. And when we are referring to just transition, we're referring to inclusiveness, re-skilling, retraining, and also the social impact of the different policies. And the second speaker talked about yellow vest and this is one important aspect. It's not just what you suggest as the target or the objective of your policy, you also need to figure out the correct way to go about implementing it, otherwise you are just creating social confusion and arrest. And as I said before, this particular report will be useful for us, for our internal discussion and consistency. And I again refer to Angelos Comen, let's have a platform where we really work together for an impact. It will also be important for the politicians in the member states and the decision makers. The idea is to facilitate them, identify investments and absorption of the available funds at national level, but also create cause country alliances for sustainable recovery. For example, the Mediterranean countries could align because they have common idiosyncratic features. In addition, this report can be important for the public sector and the business to facilitate public-private partnerships and mobilize the private resources for the implementation of the European Green Deal. And at the end of the whole thing, which is what I want to emphasize in closing my intervention, is that we want to create a climate impact by Mifesto, to engage together with the politicians and policy makers, all other relevant stakeholders, businesses, the financial sector, the civil society, the universities. The universities that have the capacity to train the stakeholders to really construct resilient plans. And at this point, I would like to remind everybody of systems innovation approach, which can be an approach that can really methodologically help member states construct really resilient recovery plans. Why? Because it's demand-led. It involves multiple interventions acting on different levels or drivers of change. And it is based upon co-designing portfolios or connected innovation actions and projects. And it also accelerates learning, rapid evaluation and sharing of what works and what does not work. What does this mean in practice? It means that we can provide technical assistance to orchestrate the development, the designing of this recovery plan based on country-specific needs, identification of innovation, opportunity and needs in key systems of value change, comprehensive portfolio framework development, intelligence sourcing and assessment of project applications, participatory co-design, highlighting the gaps and providing learnings from innovative projects in existing European portfolios. This is thematic and continuous with regards to learning and adaptation processes and always retrain and re-skill. What I'm trying to get across is that this, we are trying to transform using these resilience recovery plan, the systems in our country. And it is a great opportunity. This crisis is a great opportunity for looking at the system as a whole, integrating the policies, the top-down policies that we have, the STGs, the European Green Deal, the Recovery Fund and provide solutions. Yes, and provide solution pathways that are really able to transform the system. In closing, I would like to say that the point on managing public debt is crucial. It is very important that we produce structural reforms that will create an impact and a positive impact on the socioeconomic system, much bigger than the debt that each country is taking. Otherwise, we are creating again an unsustainable pathway, which will be detrimental for the future generations. Thank you. Many, many thanks, Phoebe, for these insights. And we look forward to this report, especially because we're very keen on what our previous speakers have mentioned, including Estelle and Eloise, these policy coherence that is so necessary to make sure that we're not having negative trade-offs. We have one person that has asked to take the floor. And I think we're going to just give her the opportunity to join. I'm going to ask everyone to turn on their cameras so that you can answer. And I'm going to give the floor to Catarina Germano. I hope I'm pronouncing your name properly. Catarina, feel free to jump in. And perhaps while she gets her microphone ready, we have a couple of other questions. So I think perhaps Estelle, this would be most relevant for you. What pathways and instruments are there within the European semester framework to ensure close monitoring of the resilience and the recovery and resilience plans? And under what circumstances do you envisage sanctions being possible or any kind of enforcement? So this is actually not built into the semester. This is actually not built into the European semester, but rather into the RF regulation and setup itself. Because in their plans, member states will have to identify and put forward a certain number of milestones and targets, and they can present requests for disbursements twice a year. And so twice a year when they present a request for disbursement, they will have to prove that a certain number of milestones and targets have been reached. And then we assess, say whether we believe that this is the case, and then council has also a role in this to look at it as well. And only then can the money be dispersed. So a sanction mechanism as such, well, it would be that we don't disperse because we consider that the milestones have not been reached. This is how it would work. Thank you very much. I think, I believe it was Angelo that brought up the question of resilience. And what exactly do we mean by resilience. So, I'm going to throw these to all speakers. If anyone wants to jump in, what exactly do we think is key about these words resilience and how do we build that in Europe? Maria, if you want me to very quickly say something on this resilience. Yes, yes, please go ahead. But I just said please very quickly. Resilience, it's about the economy, the society and the interaction between humans and nature. And it means that you're better prepared and less vulnerable to shocks. So it means that after a shock, environmental shock, a health shock and economic shock, you are able to quickly regain your organization structure and function. I can go deeply in it. Thank you for the add off please go ahead. I think there are some problems with the notion of resilience. It came up very, very quickly in spring as a new narrative. And obviously, due to the crisis, one can understand this. But as I have learned over the time, this notion is quite defensive. It is not progressive in a way that you have a future that you envision. And I was very happy to learn from, from the EU commissioner who is responsible for the four side processes. Mr. Sefkovich, that they actually say we need to build in and to the notion of resilience, some sort of the objective society is striving for. And so I think that the sustainable development narrative still is something that is more progressive because it rolls out objectives we are working for. You can obviously also include into resilience, a future of a stable society in the future. But that is a little bit difficult. But I think this also mirrors the change in narrative. The commission president from the line spoke a lot on fragility that is more or less the flip side of resilience. So and I think what we should make sure is that we have a vision of a society that actually strives for human well being. Thank you. Yes, if I if I can just just you just said something very important. And resilience, it's really the capacity to go on when things change. This means also flexibility. That's the point that some people see resilience as maintaining a status quo resilience means also be able to adapt to change easier. So you don't have your whole economy, doing only tourism, or you don't do having another thing or you don't focus on one thing and neglect others you know you can create a structure that when when something happens. It's more mobile. Like you have a social system that supports people moving from one sector to another so you avoid this situation where you'll get stuck this is for me resilient. One of the things I would like to warn is is effectively the use of words because here I heard today that there are no tradeoffs in all my career all my life. Every decision is a tradeoff. And we don't have to forget things like we were speaking about the cup that was mentioned that the cup has lost this SDGs don't forget that it lost when it went to parliament so you have a document that the commission, let's say the bureaucrats road. And then the vote the elected people destroyed so you need to be aware of that because every decision if you try to sustain more ecology and nothing that is always a tradeoff and there will always be someone that says hey I am being affected. Be aware of that. We don't overpromise I am I'm scared about words the people want to do no harm do no harm do no harm how I mean we don't walk and there are you know how do you measure these things. We need to have clarity, but this is sustainability to set this is that the capacity to absorb and to adapt to change is very very important more important that sustaining and protecting things like they were always in the past. Thank you very much. Okay. We also have a question about how can the recovery and resilience facility as well as the semester be used to avoid divergence from social dimensions, specifically following after the pandemic. In particular, leaving vulnerable groups behind. Is that what you want. Would you want to. Yes, I think that this idea to avoid divergences between member states are to avoid that they increase because we already have divergences I mean, let's be also clear about that. To avoid that they increase and then we go towards a total fragmentation of our union. And this was at the core of the full package of the next generation, you proposal, because what we did at the beginning of the crisis with this activation of the general state clause so meaning that the stability in both parts does not bite with say, and also with the temporary framework for state date, this allowed member states to take the necessary measures to confront the crisis. But the thing is that not all member states had the same margins of maneuver and the same capacities to do this. So this is why in May we put forward this proposal so as to give all member states more support. And also with the weighting of the allocation key that ensures that those mostly need most to get the biggest, biggest share of the funds, and so it's the whole philosophy behind the next generation. More specifically, and I think that by addressing some of the CSRs that would already help you know to to act towards convergence because the logic of the CSRs is also to look at member states but in comparison with others and where progress would be needed in some fields. So, well, this would be, this would be my reply. And also, to mention again the shoe, for instance, that was a part of the April package, and that also provides support to it was open to all member states at only 17 or 19, I think, deciding for it. And so it's an additional layer of support for short time work since, for instance. Thank you very much, Adolf, go ahead. Still, may I ask you why is the commission didn't include any reference to the STG's in the in the commission working documents. We have the decision to realign the semester with the STG's. We have the decision that the semester and the recovery could work hand in hand over the years to come. So why didn't you include any reference to the STG's is their political. Has it tends to that or what is the, what's the reason. It's a difficult question. I don't think that it's an outright, you know, our conscious political decision against the STG's. I think that, as you say, with the prices. There was a focus or new language was used speaking about vulnerable vulnerabilities and how to address them well then reply is resilience. I think that sometimes we kind of reinvent our toolbox under the urgency of crisis and when in the end I mean what I always try to argue is that if you look at the policy objective objectives as such. You find the link to the STG's and it is the STG's but it's not the same terminology that we use and this indeed I mean I regret it it's a pity. And I think that we can still try to work to compensate this a bit via the implementation the final final decisions and stepping stones towards the implementation of the RF. And we should come forward with the documents before the end of the year to focus again on the STG's and to explain how we approach the STG's. It will not be what had been called for by the STG community but also by co legislators meaning free fledged STG strategy that it will not be. But it will explain how we intend to take the STG's forward. Thank you very much. I am. Oh. Go ahead. But we have one minute. I would like to say that in the word thing because we dig into the wording of the documents the European Green Deal the recovery plan the STG's the wording it's not identical but the concepts are consistent. What Estelle has said is absolutely true, especially if you study the documents work by work and you try to do the 3D mapping. So it was it would have been better. It was if we had an explicit STG reference, but I think that the consistency is there and maybe this is our fault. The advocates of STG we were not vocal enough to remind of these and maybe countries find it difficult to implement the STG's and it will have been much better if we communicate the six transformations much more in a stronger way because that is much more careful and I like to close by saying that sustainability includes the resilience in all science academic documents and I think this is the aim of the policy documents as well that can be no sustainable development without resilience and of course the resilience includes the adaptive capacity that you have referred to. Thank you so much. There are two more questions but we only have we have the line for 10 more minutes if everyone agrees to stay. I do want to acknowledge Katerina because she had raised her hand and asked something that is I think you may want to back at because you you have written about this question of how to include well-being focus as opposed to just a very traditional GDP focus on on fiscal policies so her question is whether it would be possible to envisage a new well-being strategy moving away from GDP oriented fiscal policies to policies more oriented on well-being. Do you do you want to take the floor Elise? Yeah of course yeah it's something that's completely possible and a lot of stakeholders are pushing for this now and we've seen it with the well-being economy alliance which includes the New Zealand, Iceland, Scotland and those those territories have been doing a lot of work on well-being in the past few years in New Zealand for instance there's a 83 indicators that are used to measure the well-being of the population and they use those results to do their policymaking and it's the Ministry of Economy who works with this and for now it's showing good results so that's something that could be of course implemented on the long run as part of the European semester in the EU and the European Union could be at the forefront of the well-being economy of course. Maria may I add something? Yes but the problem is that in the last few years all the movement about beyond GDP was not really at the centre of the debate I mean a few years ago there was a debate about beyond GDP but in the last few years it has disappeared so I think it's great that this crisis was advocating it, we hope that we can get back to it but the impression is that now also because of Covid everybody is just referring to GDP and they need to restore it so I'm not so optimistic that it is easy to get back to beyond GDP debate. Thank you Angelo I think that's a very clear point this crisis has changed the debate massively. The last question that we have is very much from our community so we have agreed today that we need to coordinate action across the European SDSNs. We also agree that we need to bring these processes to our community and to the general public more prominently and the semester recommendations should be known and understood by people. We also agree that we need to bring universities and knowledge producing centres to provide evidence to this debate and Phoebe is going to be producing this fantastic report very shortly but how can we do this in terms of how can we mobilize funds for these communities and I know that there are a number of initiatives from the European Commission in particular Horizon 2020 to help accelerate these. But does anyone want to take a crack of how can we fund this support? I mean very quickly because I've been involved in several projects that are sit in the dialogues radio programs and things like this I've been creating some helping to develop some radio programs and information one of the things is true there is a lack of information. And these programs have been financed by the use one of them was what is collision and so on and it was very interesting. And I think that there is a lack of really. There was funding also I mean these programs then stopped they tried to continue but they said without finding we would go back into the old things there is a lack of focus. Also the citizens now they worried about the things that are happening in their in their backyard, the hearing about EU programs is, you know, not so interesting or the even the SDGs because to abstract so it needs to go really it should be a lot more work to help the ones that are reaching the local areas, you know, the national radio stations the local research and to help them also because they were, I went and I trained them I explained them cohesion policy had they were surprised they said oh but we didn't know all of this. There is, there is a lot of work to do there and it's necessary to have communication programs that is about bringing awareness. Then we had debates where people came they had many opinions it's important it's an open you don't go around preaching. Very important no citizen dialogue that is one way. It is a hard job but the Commission has started, and what I would say is to go on with it. Then universities, this is it goes through horizon but also the individual DGS are doing one of these programs with the finance by the region by by the DG so there are ways to do it the funding as if there are so many funding streams I think you can do it. And also it's a question of the national authorities when they use structural funds and they have communication and things that they could fund. They also could sometimes make an effort to do these things with this funding that is from the EU, because they also responsible for not having communicated to be honest, they, they also can do this themselves. It's not always that the EU has to come with their money, when you get already a few billion from the EU to do things you could have something to communicate the operation that's all I would just stop here is I think there are many ways to do that, including of course universities we had universities, we have scientists coming to meetings to discuss for example climate change and the use of funds and things like this. It's all possible. TV. I think the horizon European Green Deal calls are a good opportunity and the one that is focused on citizenship participation, we have a lot of capacity. Many of us have been coordinating such programs for 25 years now. Now we have lots of capacity. I suggest Maria will create a platform, you know, a Google dog. I don't know how you do it. We include all our national hubs, and we try to build this proposal, an institution with lots of experience in this can coordinate it. We have the capacity and we should also bring in our other regular partners that are not academic because this proposal needs not academic partners explicit the core funding to show that others are interested in deep demonstration projects. We have the capacity to bring all of this in. It's a good opportunity for us because it's 10 million for some years for us to have the funding to really streamline in our efforts. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Well, I think we need to end here. Thank you to all of our speakers for fantastic insights and for making yourself available to discuss with us. We have a lot of homework and we really want to bring these slightly arduous processes such as the semester to our communities and make sure that we are participating and we are bringing our points of view. To everyone joining us today, just a reminder that the European Sustainable Development Report will be launched towards the end of November beginning of December. So we will send you the information about via email, and we will also be sharing the report that Phoebe is preparing with her team to map out all of these different policies at the national and then at the European level. Once again, thank you everyone for joining and we will be in touch with you on on the next steps. Have a very good day. Thank you.