On 7 July 2016, an event entitled ‘’Next steps for a sustainable European future: Reforming Europe – Implementing SDGs’’, took place in European Economic and Social Committee, with the presence of first Vice-President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans & the Senior Adviser for Sustainable Development Karl Falkenberg.

In the framework of the event, ALDA attended the conference & the workshops held, which focused on the different dimensions of SDGs, all very related to the objectives of its LADDER Project.

The first workshop, named ‘’Planet: Sustainable consumption and production’’, had to do with the environmental dimension of sustainable development. Issues like how could sustainable consumption and production be succeed within EU, whether collaborative economy would contribute to a sustainable consumption and questions about how these new practices and eco-friendly products could be adapted and accepted by today’s community were discussed extensively.

In the second workshop, entitled ‘’People: Social Justice and Decent Work’’, issues were raised concerning the eradication of poverty, the promotion of decent work and the fight against inequalities and discrimination. In the final conclusions of that Workshop, the need of social protection and social investments aiming to a more qualitative work was stressed, as well as the need of setting employment and environmental standards for succeeding a decent work, the necessity of insuring a policy coherence in terms of implementing SDGs, and finally the need of regaining the trust of European citizens by redefining the aim of SDGs.

The third workshop called ‘’Global Partnership and peace’’ raised issues concerning the revitalization of Global Partnership for Sustainable Development and the enforcement of global solidarity with the participation of all countries, stakeholders and people. The conversation concluded by emphasizing the need of focusing on the principles of SDGs, paying attention on citizens’ initiatives and fostering the credibility of EU by passing from tokenism to practice.

In the final workshop under the title: ‘’Prosperity-Sustainable business and investment’’, issues relevant to economic and financial dimension of sustainable development were discussed. The stimulation of innovative ideas, the technical support and enhancement of conceptual ideas in the business world and some ideas on how could business deliver successfully SDGs, were the main conclusions of that workshop.

At the end of the conference, Mr Falkenberg introduced his report (to be made available in July 2016) on the EU’s strategy for incorporating the sustainable development dimension into all EC’s actions & policies.