 This is the last webinar of the second series that we are organizing with parliamentarians for the Global Goals with the Sustainable Development Network and of course with Universal Health Coverage 2030. So here we are going to have a very interesting program, this time we are making changes. We are going to start with Dr. Jeffrey Sacks for his opening remarks, then we are going to have our panelists and then we are going to jump to breakout sessions because we want to share the best practices that we are implementing at the national level. The national budgets are a key aspect on how to turn the national level into local realities. If I may, I would like to turn off your microphone because if you don't we are going to listen to your conversations. So without further ado, I would like to give a floor to Professor Jeffrey Sacks, President of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, who is going to give us the opening remarks. Gabriella, thank you very much. And also to Kirsten Brosebel and all of my colleagues, Lauren Brado and others at SDSN and thank you to Amherst students also for the interpretation services. This is a very important workshop with a very basic idea. And that is that our budgeting should be based on our goals, not our goals based on our budgeting or not the two separate. Typically budgets facing parliaments are set a year at a time and in a very incremental manner that this year's budget looks like last year's budget with some adjustments depending on the annual priorities. If we operate in that way, we will not achieve our goals, especially broad transformative goals such as the Sustainable Development Goals or the Paris Agreement for Climate Safety. The SDGs and the Paris Goals are goals that are set for many years in the future, very bold transformations to arrive at a better future by the year 2030 or the year 2050. With the SDGs, we have a number of commitments that all of our countries have made to ensuring that every child is in school, that everybody has health care coverage, that everybody has modern energy services. And we have set the year 2030 as the timeline to achieve those universal objectives for the Paris Climate Agreement. We stated the goal in terms of limiting warming on the planet to under 1.5 degrees Celsius. And then the scientists translated that into a global need to decarbonize the energy system by mid-century. So in both the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement, we have a set of objectives that require us to look forward for 10 years in the case of the SDGs and even 30 years in the case of the Paris Agreement. Now, I'm sure members of parliament will recognize that this is not the normal way that the budget processes are discussed. And the idea of linking budgets to goals, which is so basic and so crucial, is not how my government in the United States operates, not even close, and it's not how governments in most parts of the world operate. But it is the purpose of our workshop today. I believe the parliamentarians should be demanding of government and asking of government ministers who come to parliament to present the budget. How does this budget relate to achieving the sustainable development goals? And in each of the critical areas, and these will be the topics of the breakout sessions, parliamentarians should press and find out and confirm that the budget that is being proposed is consistent systematically with achieving goals as of the year 2030 in the case of the Sustainable Development Goals. And so this is the point of our workshop. If we could make our budget allocations consistent with our goals, we will actually achieve our goals. If we leave the budget and the goals as two separate ideas or leave the goals as simply an inspiration or an aspiration, but treat the budget in practical terms as something divorced from the goals, we will fail to achieve the goals. Now, let me finally add one basic point. For most low income countries, the budget is not sufficient in and of itself to achieve the SDGs. If a low income country wants to ensure that every child completes a secondary education, which is SDG for or that every person in the country has universal health coverage, which is SDG three, or that every person has modern energy services, which is SDG seven, I think you'll find that the budget cannot sustain that level of investment needed to achieve those goals. And so then a problem opens up that is a problem of global cooperation, not merely a problem of domestic budgeting. It should be the job of government and parliaments to identify the budgets that are needed to achieve the goals. And when there is a gap between the needs and the realities in terms of what is available, that is also the responsibility not only of your own country, but of the entire international UN system to help you to close that financing gap. To close the gap might mean debt cancellation. It might mean debt restructuring. It might mean increased development financing from the Inter-American Development Bank, or the African Development Bank, or the Asian Development Bank, or other kinds of development assistance. But we need to identify the financing gaps in order to mobilize the international cooperation needed to close those financing gaps. So let me end here by emphasizing the idea of today's workshop. We need to budget for successful achievement of the goals that we have set. Parliamentarians need to know and hear from government that the budgets are aligned with success. Government and parliaments together need to identify financing gaps that can be closed by domestic resource reallocation, or when necessary, by international support. But we need to get serious on putting the resources behind our objectives, on ensuring that we are mobilizing the financing needed for the investments for success. I'm very excited by today's workshop. Gabriella, let me turn it back over to you and thank all of the participants and look forward to an extremely important and lively and creative session together. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jeff. And again, thank you all for participating in the webinar. Allow me to remind you that we are having interpretation services from English to Spanish. So for those who speak Spanish, please use the interpretation services. And we are going to continue with our webinar. Now we are going to go to the overview of the signing national budgets. Just as Professor Sacks was mentioning, we need to align our goals to the national budgets that we are designing, we are discussing, and finally we are approving as parliamentarians. Sometimes we don't know how much we can do in a parliament to change people's realities if we are able to build better budgets. So we are going to have three panelists. I would like to start with Dr. Ahmed Almandari. He's the regional director of the World Health Organization at the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office. I had the pleasure to have a meeting with him just a couple of weeks ago in Cairo and allow me to tell you that we decided to invite Dr. Almandari because he's really making a difference working with parliamentarians directly. They are building a very interesting network, so he's a very good example on how we can translate global commitments to national realities. Thank you very much, Dr. Almandari. The floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much, Gabriella, for your introduction and thank you, for interviewing the lines of this workshop. It is my great pleasure and honor to be with you. So I'm going to just share with you my presentation. So I hope the slides are clear, visible to you, colleague. Great. I mean, just I'd like to start my presentation with this slide in which, you know, broadly saying that our DIGI, Dr. Tedros, as signed in 2018, you know, the memorandum of understanding with the IBU, it is a very great, you know, milestone and step towards working together and strengthening the collaboration between both of our organizations and ourselves as well to serve our countries and make sure, as Geffrey had mentioned, that, you know, whatever finances and funds given to different sectors in the country are given also to the health care system in a very sort of equitable manner that will serve citizens. You know, that sort of memorandum of understanding signed between the two organizations based on the GBW-13 strategic planning in which, as stated here, that WHO will leverage domestic investment in health by posturing citizens' participation, civil society dialogue and by interacting with governments, including heads of states and parliamentarians and finance ministers. So parliamentarians play a very major role in that sort of discussion and implementation of whatever suggestions or recommendations that we all seek to. Based on that, we have started in 2018, in fact, a lot of activities and I'm really happy to see colleagues from IMRO participating in this workshop in order to make sure that we are not missing a very key player in these sort of discussions and rebuilding and supporting health care system, which are the parliamentarians. So in 2018, September, we started our expert advisory group consultation in a meeting in Amman, Jordan, which was then followed by, you know, in that meeting, in fact, there was a discussion and exchange of experiences and lessons from different countries on how best, you know, to promote the rule of parliamentarians in supporting the health care system. That was then followed by another meeting in Beirut, planning the way forward and establishing what we call regional parliamentarian forum or group, which was then taken afterwards in another meeting the year after in Tunisia, and there was a plan to have another meeting in 2020, but we couldn't make it because of Covid-19. Now, when we look at the rule of parliamentarians in IMRO here, we have two main approaches, how to promote that sort of rule. The first one is through promoting parliamentarians access to evidence to guide their decision for quality and affordable health services for all. And the second sort of approach is to promote policy dialogue between parliamentarians, governments and other stakeholders within the same country, which then later on, all of these two things will lead to evidence-based decisions that is made, you know, to address the priority health needs of all in the most effective and efficient manner, leaving no one behind, fulfilling the expectation of the GBW-13. Now, when it comes into rules of parliamentarians here in IMRO, we identified four main rules in promoting health and well-being for all, as I said, based on the spirit of the GBW-13 and our vision for all by all. The first rule is lawmaking. Parliamentarians play a very major role when it comes into reviewing and proposing legislations that will definitely impact directly or indirectly the health and the health system. The second rule is through budgeting, reviewing and approving national budgets that are coming to their, the body, parliamentarian bodies before going up into Minister of Finance for final implementation. The third rule is oversight, monitoring the executive branch and holding it accountable when it comes into, you know, making use efficiently and effectively the resources we have. And the last rule is representation, which means representing the diverse interests and needs of their constituents and those who selected them and trusted them to do so. Now, we talk about- I'm sorry to interrupt you. Our translator is asking you to slow down just a little bit. Thank you. Please continue. I'm sorry for that, you know, I just want to save time. Sure. Thank you. So now when it comes into advancing the universal health coverage, which is considered as the heart of engaging parliamentarians here in the region, we, in fact, you know, based on the meaning and the definition of the universal health coverage that all people and communities can use the promotive or the different, I mean, the wide range of services from promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative, as well as palliative services, they need of sufficient quality and safety as well to be effective while also ensuring that the use of these services does not expose them to financial hardship. And here, in fact, just I'd like to share with you three pillars. The population coverage, which means that we have to make sure we cover everyone and no one is left behind. The second pillar or dimension is the service coverage, which means that we will make sure what other systems we have are really providing the services I have mentioned just that are preventative, curative, rehabilitative and other services needed and leaving no service that the community in need of it. And the third and the most important pillar and dimension is financial protection. We need to cover large population. We need to cover a large number of services, but at the same time, we should not expose, by doing so, the people in the community to financial hardship. So that is the spirit of what is the meaning of universal health coverage in IMRO. This is just to share with you the level of the universal health coverage or service coverage in EMR based on reports 2015 and 2017, comparing the two. Overall, if you see here the EMR median, we used to be 65, approximately in 2015, but we moved into 68 almost in 2018. Now, that is the middle value of a wide range that is between 25% in Somalia, for example, and reaching up to 83% or 82% in Qatar. Still, there is a lot of work needs to be done. Now, when it comes into the evidence, which shows us that the more public spending and government spending on health, the less the out-of-bucket expenditure from individuals, which means financial protection. And in this graph, it shows that the more the spending countries are given to the health care system in providing more services covering large population, the less the spending people are having on their own health, which means at the end, more, less exposure to financial hardship. Now, the key message is that I'd like to share with our humanitarian colleagues our four. The first one, based on our EMR financing atlas that was published in 2018 and based on it's findings, key findings, investment in health is insufficient, as have been mentioned by Prof. Geffrey. Public spending on health is low, despite sufficient fiscal space that is available there. Population are not fully covered. Large number of people are left behind. They are not able to go and get the service they need and they deserve. This resulted in high out-of-bucket payment. So what will be the rule of parliamentarians at this issue? My message, we need more public money for health. And here comes your rule, as parliamentarians, as I have mentioned in the four main rules that I just shared with you in the previous slides. Now, the second message to you, we all know that when it comes into the development of the budget and the spending to the health care system, it goes through three main stages. It will start by budget formulation, how the public spending are given to the priorities based on a determination. And then it goes into budget execution using that money in a very efficient manner. And then again, it will go into budget monitoring, how the public spending is accounted for and results of that are achieved. So it is like a cycle. Here comes the rule of parliamentarians. In each of these steps, the rule of parliamentarians is a key factor. They need to be really effectively involved in each of these stakes. And I know that some countries, parliamentarians are involved in each of the three stakes in a very effective manner. But sometimes we need to fight for our right. Now, the third message here that we all know, the classical end of the budget do not necessarily align with health priorities. Many countries, they go based on the traditional way of developing the budget. They look at the money needed for personal number of staff in terms of quantity who are going to use goods and provide services. And then there is a transfer between them. But let me say that this is not going to really help us from now onward. We have to change our mentality when it comes into developing the budget. It has to be program oriented based on sector priorities for better service coverage, as I said, for better quality of service and for targeted support for vulnerable groups. So my third message, we need to move towards program based budgeting. And we have to push for that. Otherwise, there'll be a lot of resources wasted, a lot of people left behind, which means introducing the public into financial hardship. My third, I mean, last message, sorry for that. My fourth message, you know, that with COVID, we all have gone through almost a year and a half of lessons to learn. So WHO identified three measures to facilitate better budgeting for COVID response in addition to the other services. The first one, you know, using existing budgetary flexibility to fund more public measures, which were lacking and not there at the beginning of the pandemic. And we have all seen how much systems have been suffering, whether wealthy, well-resourced countries or low-resourced countries. Number two, accelerate revision of finance laws to secure a budget for the response through expenditure airmarking. This will definitely facilitate providing new resources to services that are in need, which comes on and off. It is not continuous and it will appear all of a sudden. The third one is the, you know, release public funds to frontline service providers timely and facilitating expenditure tracking, which is very important to make sure that resources are really well utilised. So my message here, we need to work with ministers, ministries of finance to ensure more and and and flexible money is given for health and health sector as well in general. So my concluding remarks, colleagues, that, you know, health for all, by all is our regional motto. It has been introduced in 2018 and endorsed by member states. We have made strategies for strategies. We have managed to get some successes. We faced challenges. Yes. That's why, in fact, we started this year last month. We call it midterm Bush forward review for this vision to make sure that we are really heading towards our targets. We are in the right line and looking at lessons we have learned for the first half of this vision. The second concluding remark, you know, parliamentarians can play important role as I have mentioned with you in promoting health as well as well being and leveraging, you know, on their multiple functions and access to many government and non-government decision makers and policy makers. Covid-19 highlighted the need to accelerate budget structure reforms. It is becoming a mandatory thing that we need to do based on the lessons we have learned for the last many years and successes that we have gained or failures that we have gone through, you know, towards more public money for health with flexibility and accountability. My last slide, just I'd like to thank you, Gabriel and all colleagues for giving me this opportunity, assuring you that we are very much committed to strengthen your role, work with you hand in hand and making sure that our target, all of our targets are really fulfilled. You know, expectations are fulfilled. And here there are two just links I'd like to share with you with the very wealthy resources of documents. The first one is about WHO program of work on budgeting in health. It has a lot of documents. If you go there, it is free, you know, free access. The second link is on WHO repository of health budgets. You know, it also contains a lot of documents and wealthy resources of knowledge and evidence-based studies. Thank you very much, Gabriel, and thank you very much, colleagues, for giving me this opportunity. Back to you, Gabriel. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Almandari, for this wonderful presentation. I think it's very clear how parliamentarians' responsibility can and must make a change to the budget, particularly when it comes to health. I would like to add that when we have this conversation in Cairo, Dr. Almandari used, I think, a very interesting concept, at least from me. I am from Mexico, from the other side of the planet. And it is the constant emergency where that some countries are experiencing. Yes, we are now in the middle of a pandemic that apparently has been in the middle, like for a long time. But but we're experiencing very challenging times during this COVID-19 pandemic. But we can also and we should include in our budgets those people that are living in constant emergencies, immigrants, refugees, internal displaced people. So there are a lot of things that we can do, but we we need also to take into account these these very interesting concepts, I think. And perhaps we should make a webinar or something on how we should be working for the people that are living in vulnerable circumstances or in these constant emergencies. Thank you very much, Dr. Almandari. Now we are moving to Dr. Fernando Aportela. I would like to to mention that he is a professor at ITAM, the Technological Autonomous Institute of Mexico, my own country and my alma mater. But he has a very interesting background. Dr. Aportela has been working in private businesses and finance. He has been also a deputy minister, so he knows very well how the finance ministry works. And he's also in the academia. So when we are taking a look on how we should build more partnerships and work together with different stakeholders, well, he's a perfect example on how we can bring different voices to the table. Thank you very much, Dr. Aportela, that was yours. Thank you very much, Gabriela, for the invitation. Do you hear me well? OK. Yes. Well, thanks a lot for the invitation. Been hearing and looking at the presentations of this very important topic on how to incorporate SDG on all the national budgets. And it's always my impression that we have to somehow try to handle the budgets and to try to incorporate in the core of the budget, all the SDG agenda. Let me share the presentation that I have, which is a very brief presentation. I did this presentation with Regis Ruiz, who is also in the seminar. Do you see the presentation? Yes. Yes. Well, first of all, I would like to say that the budget is a living it's a living matter. When you construct the budget, basically what it does, it reflects the the timing, the costs and the nature of doing and getting the goals of the government and the agenda of the government. It is a financial but it's also a political exercise that is that is very important. It has two things and as Professor Sacks mentioned, it has a lot of already compromises and a lot of every year, most of the budget is already spent, which is a reality. You cannot change that over over one day, over one year, over two years, five years. It's like a very big boat that you when you steer the boat slowly, slowly, slowly, because it has a lot of pre commitments there. But one thing that is very important for parliamentarians is that there is a core principle for the budget, which is accountability. And that is an element in which you can have an influence and that you can have all the supervision and revisions that you need to have in order to try to incorporate over time the SDG goals. The question remains is how do you get the funds or the money over time to pay for the SDGs? There are many ages involved in budgeting. The first one and probably the most important one, which because it is the institution that has the you say, as the lawyer said, that when you have the pen, you have some sort of advantage when constructing documents. Think on the Ministry of Finances as the institution that has the pen writing the documents. The second one, of course, most very, very important is the parliaments and Congresses. There are in some countries independent budget offices, which gives you the more of the long-term or multi-annual view of the budget in terms of how are you forecasting GDP growths or population trends, et cetera, et cetera. NGOs and private advisors, of course, referendums. Now, this is a, as I said, it's a living exercise, but what you have to take into consideration is that when the budget is approved, that is just one picture. It's like if you take a screenshot with your cell phone and that is the picture that you have at the very beginning of the fiscal year, but then over the year, the budget is a living thing and it changes. And probably that is where we have an opportunity here that we are going to describe later in the presentation. It was mentioned briefly by my predecessors about the fiscal, the budgeting laws and fiscal responsibility laws. I will say that in the fiscal responsibility laws, not all the countries have them, which is a very, very good practice. And it's also a very good opportunity to introduce long-term or medium-term SDG goals. One thing about the every year exercise of the budget, but if you have in the fiscal responsibility rules, SDG goals and you incorporate SDG goals and as a responsible fiscal practice, which at the end of the day, it is because it's not, SDG are not fighting with the good responsibility over the long-term because if you have health, if you have a good environment, at the end of the day, you also have fiscal sustainability. It's not only health or global sustainability, it's also fiscal sustainability. You can introduce in those laws, basic principles of basic guidelines of how much money you have to spend on SDG over time. So that is a place to look at it. Certainly not only budget, but also fiscal responsibility laws. Then you have to create, you can create committees. You can also as a parliamentarian, check for the budget every year. In some countries, check every six years. It's the accountability principle that I mentioned. But nevertheless, when you look at these, I will say that one important piece that I want to mention that has not been mentioned a lot is that you have to consider how to introduce changes in the fiscal responsibility laws that have, that in some way they govern every year budget exercise. So that is a good place to start. So when we talk about these, budget every year, at the end of the day, is the discussion of where are we going to get the money to pay for the SDGs? No. We can think of three things. First, to integrate basically to say, well, every year we have to spend in this area of SDG X amount of money, which probably will be difficult, especially in these circumstances where we had the pandemics and all finances of all. Nations are stressed by the fact that they have to pay for the pandemic and they have a reduction. They also suffer a reduction in incoming revenues. But it's something that you should try every year. Then you can also create special committees to or including SDG agenda to existing committees. That's something that is a capability that parliamentarians have. And those two probably will be the, as I mentioned together with the changes in the fiscal responsibility laws. I think that those two will be like the traditional way of doing things over time. And the other one that when Reyes and myself were thinking about this last week, say, why don't we propose something that is kind of out of the box idea? And why don't we take advantage of the spending efficiencies of the executive? And that's the idea that we want to give to you, that's something that can be probably put together and probably will be in all the countries, but something that certainly has, I believe, given my experience in the government, it's something that has some possibilities. Well, when you look at the budget, as I mentioned, the budget is a screenshot when you approve the budget. And then you start spending the money over the months, the next two months in the fiscal year. And what happens all the time is that you have some inefficiencies at the end of the day because you cannot spend all the money in all the projects that you have. For example, one, if you have an infrastructure project and then you have some rainings, some very strong rain at the end of the year, then you won't be able to spend all the money that you have allocated for that project. What happens with that money that it is not spent at the end of the year? Basically what the ministers of finance do, they relocate the money. And they tend to do, even the ministers of finances, they tend to relocate the monies to improve the fiscal balance at the end of the year. It's not devoted to any other, if the preference for the minister of finances is not to spend it in new project, is to save it, to improve the balance. That is how it is, that is how it's done. And they have the capabilities to relocate that. So imagine that you say to them, to the ministers of finances in the discussion or you establish in the fiscal responsibility law and to say, well, you know, a percentage of those, of that money that you relocate every year at the end of the year, which is not money that you have a use for that, just a percentage of that, why don't we create a fund to finance the SDG agenda? And I don't think that that will be very difficult to promote or to pass with the ministers of finances. Why? Because at the very beginning, when the screenshot is taken, everybody will say to you, I'm going to spend all the money, the reality is they are not. They will always be short process at the end of the year. So in a way, you are allocating zero at the end of the project. But every year you will have money by the end of the year. So you can have an instrument to finance the agenda that can be permanent, taking a percentage of these inefficiencies or surpluses that develop in the budget process, in the execution of the budget every year. So that's what I have to say. It's, we have a paper in the rest of the presentation which is how the budget is done. It's an OECD paper, which is, we believe it's a good paper, but that's, those are my comments. It is important, it is always important to think about the budget as a living process. It's always important, the supervision. And we, given the circumstances in which we are, it is also a good idea to start thinking on this type of extra budgeting solution that can be funded over time without many resistances from central governments. Thank you very much again, Gabriela, for letting us participate in this webinar. Thanks. Thanks to you, Dr. Portela. Thank you for your very good advice and good remarks. I think that having this perspective from someone who worked at the executive in Mexico, that had a strong relationship with the parliamentarians, now with the academia and private businesses, it's very interesting for us as members of parliament. We're having a couple of questions for you at the group chats. So as we're going to jump to the breakout sessions, I am not sure if we're going to have time for answering the questions. So if you can please give them the answer that could be very useful. And now we are going to our third panelist, Dr. Elisabeth Heger, Research Fellow from the Sustainable Development Governance Program. Thank you very much for joining us and you have now the floor. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I work at, I will try to share my screens. Do you see it now? And you hear me, perfect. So I work at Idri, the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, where we did a study that I was asked to present here very previously in 2018 already, which is called Integrating Esteges International Vegetarian Processes. And why did we do this study? Because we went to the high level political forum, which is the review forum for the STG agenda. And we heard more and more countries stating that they have aligned their budget with the STG. So we thought, well, that sounds interesting and actually quite concrete compared to what you sometimes hear at the high level political forum. Sometimes it's very general statement. So we thought, well, that sounds interesting, but what does it actually mean? So that was the main question of the study. I also show here that actually this STSN network, one of the hosts here today, also included in their report in 2019, the question to countries, do you make a link between the budget and the STGs? Yes or no? So there were actually 18 countries saying that, yes, there is a link. So there are already first practices and we wanted to have a more qualitative approach to see, okay, what are actually the different methodologies that countries use to link the STGs into the vegetarian cycle and at what stage? So the last presentation was a very good introduction also to this because now you have the overview of all the cycle. And what we actually saw was, for example, we had interviews with representatives from Finland and Norway and one way they use the STGs in their vegetarian cycle is that they use it as we could say to improve their vegetarian narrative. So they ask different ministries in their budget proposal to justify how their budgetary proposal contributes to the sustainable development agenda. And we thought this was interesting and useful but what I wanted to state and I think the speaker just before me did this very well is that there are technical tools that we can use to link the STGs, to make reference to the STGs for example in the budget as Finland and Norway do now, but that is only one part. And then the other part is how do we use these technical tools in the political debate? And what I found interesting in Norway for example is that already before the STG agenda, they have the tradition to include in the budgetary debate a session for also civil society actors to comment on the budget proposal. So we thought this was interesting and we saw that now since the STGs are part of the budget proposal, the CSO civil society organizations could actually use these references to actually question the government and the ministries on their different proposals and whether they're really coherent with the commitment they made to the STGs. Here we have an example for example from development NGOs that then realized that there was actually a decrease in for example the development assistance going towards renewable energy deployment and then they could use this information and saying, well, you have committed to the sustainable development agenda. How is this compatible with these objectives? So this is one way we observed and then there is another way. Some countries actually used the STGs to organize like a mapping of their budget against the 17 STGs. Here maybe I want to state two points is that again, the question is that it's interesting to have this kind of overview. But then the question is, the more important question for me would be then how will this information be used in the budgetary debate or also to prepare maybe the next budget. If we see that there's an incoherence maybe between what are the political commitments we say for example, we have a strong commitment on climate and then we see there's almost no expenditure on climate so how does this work together? So this is one point. Then another point is that this is of course very broad just link it to the STGs and the question behind this actually. So it's very difficult to see if we have so much expenditure on for example, agriculture STG2 that does not necessarily mean that this spending on agriculture is compatible with the 2030 agenda because what is very important to me as a researcher is that the STG agenda is about 17 sustainable development goals but also about principles. And one of these principles being the coherence between the different goals. So if we have for example, expenditure on agriculture, which is using for example a lot of pesticides and giving subsidies to practices that are destroying nature or that are supporting big firms versus small firms then we can question whether this is really compatible with the spirit of the 2030 agenda. Then we saw another way countries use the STGs in their budget and that was at the moment of the budget evaluation. So we saw Finland again for example, what they did is that they evaluated some of their taxes and subsidies and the impact they have on a set of environmental STGs so that was limited to the environmental part. And then in Mexico and Slovenia in our interviews they told us that they thought actually that the STGs were useful in updating their budget performance indicator framework. Here's just to say that what came out of our interviews was that many country representatives told us that it has budgets are a lot about priorities and difficult choices. It's important to translate the STGs into the budgetary process to have a process of prioritization in the country. So that there's already at the beginning a debate on how can we translate the 2030 agenda into national priorities, transform these international strategy with indicators and then this can feed into, for example, an investment plan as we have seen, for example, in Slovakia and also into the budget evaluation framework, for example, with indicators that are adapted to the national context. So this was one important factor of success that the country representatives told us. And I just wanted to highlight also that the STGs or the 2030 agenda are not the only way to, let's say, prove the budget with sustainable development. I just wanted to highlight the example of New Zealand which you might be familiar with that chose a wellbeing framework for their budget with five priorities and so ministries have to show how their budget proposal contributes to at least one of these objectives. And what I found most interesting, and I'm not an expert of this example, but what I found interesting in the small articles that I read is that they also ask agencies and ministries to collaborate on budget proposals. And I think that is very important because, again, as I said, STGs are not just about 17 goals, but also about the coherence between the goals and so the question of how career inherent is a national budget in itself. So I find it very interesting that here we have, they ask these ministries to come together and work together on proposals so that they can really contribute to the wellbeing objective of the country instead of just fighting against each other because of course, the making of budget is also about sometimes about fighting about how much, who gets what and so on. So I found that very interesting. Another example that we can mention is green budgeting, which is also a framework that is super collaborative on green budgeting used by the OECD, coordinated by the OECD, which was launched by Mexico and France at the One Planet Summit, I think, two years ago. And so they develop and share between countries also different methodologies. I found it a bit sad that it's only about the environmental part, but at least you have a lot of resources here on concrete methodologies. And France is, for example, following this path and what I just wanted to highlight here again is that thanks to these new methodologies that France introduced on evaluating how what is green and what is not green in their budget, this could be taken out by civil society actors again or by think tanks, also by parliamentarians. So to then see, okay, now that we have the information that this information is more readable, we can also, for example, make charts that we have here that was done by a think tank to communicate also to the population, okay, how much is actually green, how much of our budget is actually green, climate damaging, climate friendly, that they have shown here. And then this was taken up by the press. So again, what I like about this example is that it did not only stay at the technical tool that was developed, but then it's very important and that's really the role you can play as parliamentarians is that you use these technical tools that are sometimes very difficult to read for the citizens to then communicate it and question the government, take on board the press if they're really incoherences that you find. So in conclusion, what we saw when we interviewed these few countries is that there are very different methodologies from one country to another and some of them are interesting to actually evaluate the budget's impact on sustainable development goals. Sometimes, but this was not very often that we found that it could even be an opportunity to prioritize or identify investment needs, but sometimes it only stays at the level of like a new technical tool that is maybe not easily used and also the success factors that were cited by the country representatives were again, the importance of having national priorities and then having these tools actually creating a national debate. And maybe I can close with an example from Germany with a country that does not necessarily integrate the SDGs into the budgetary framework for the moment, but there was actually the court of auditors that did a report on SDGs in Germany and they said, for example, it could be used in a way to actually discuss public policies and associated expenditures. And they took the example of, for example, a prime that was paid out to families to build a home. So I was subsidizing the construction of new homes. And so they said, well, there is actually a need for new homes, families in Germany. But then the question is, maybe we should not just pay out this prime to everyone in every region because this can have a very high environmental impact, but maybe we should see it prioritized the areas where there are really a high need also for people that maybe do not have a lot of financial means to do it by their own and do not generalize the subsidy to everyone in every region because then maybe there will be constructions that would not have been necessary. So it can be a way again to coherently think about a public policy to see what are the impacts on the environmental side, social side, and so on. So this was a brief overview of the study. You can of course have a look at Idwis website for more information or so contact me directly if you're free. And if there are any other questions, I think we're running out of time, but I'm here also via mail if you want. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Heke. I think this was an amazing opportunity to understand different policies and methodologies used to link SDGs to the national budgets. Thank you very much for sharing your experience you have been working in different countries. So they say different kinds of perspectives and policies and mechanisms for budgeting are very useful for us as parliamentarians. Thank you very much.