Webinar: Aligning the European Recovery with the SDGs – Belgium as a Case Study

This webinar discussed the alignment of the European recovery plans with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

To recover from the COVID-19 crisis the EU will make €672.5 billion available through its Recovery and Resilience Facility. To benefit from the support of the Facility, Belgium and the other Member States will prepare recovery and resilience plans, which will be submitted by April 2021 in the framework of the European Semester. We discussed the role of the SDGs in these plans, both for the EU as a whole, as for Belgium in particular.

A recording of the webinar can be found here.

Speakers

• Jeffrey Sachs, President UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network
• Nikhil Seth, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Executive Director UNITAR
• Thomas Dermine, Belgian State Secretary for Recovery Program, Strategic Investments and Scientific Policy
• Dirk Fransaer, Managing Director VITO
• Veerle Nuyts, European Semester Officer and Member of the RECOVER Task Force of the European Commission
• María Cortés Puch, Vice President Networks, UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network
• Eloïse Bodin, Policy Analyst, Institute for European Environmental Policy

Presentations

[pdf-embedder url=”https://cifal-flanders.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/CIFAL_SDSN_Webinar_PPT-Veerle-Nuyts_EN_2021-02-08.pdf” title=”Presentation Veerle Nuyts – European Commission”]

[pdf-embedder url=”https://cifal-flanders.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/CIFAL_SDSN_Webinar_PPT-Thomas-Dermine_EN_2021-02-08.pdf” title=”Presentation Thomas Dermine – Belgian State Secretary for Recovery Programme”]

Relevant documents

European Commission, Recovery and Resilience Facility

Politico, article on the RRF political agreement (December 2020)

European Commission, Staff Working Document: Delivering on the UN SDGs (November 2020)

European Commission, Annual Sustainable Growth Strategy 2021 (September 2020)

European Commission, European Semester Country Specific Recommendations for Belgium 2020 (May 2020)