Briefing prepared for the European Parliament on SDGs

Please find featured below and attached a briefing prepared for the European Parliament's ENVI Committee prior to the High Level Political Forum in July 2018 - Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the UN High Level Political Forum (HLPF) , New York, 16 - 18 July 2018.

Key Findings

The SDGs framework has the potential to provide auseful overarching framework to further the debateon Europe's political priorities, with a view to pursuing social, economic and environmental sustainability, both within the Union and globally. However, this requires increasing the political buy-in across sectors.There is a need to translate the SDGs into concrete sectoral political priorities, targets and actions for the EU, and to agree on a legitimate framework for delivering these priorities across Member States.

The   July   2018   HLPF   meeting   constitutesa   window   of   opportunity   to   assert   influence   on   the  implementation of SDGs in the EU, providing an opportunity to use a range of key current EU initiatives (e.g. the EU circular economy package, post-2020 biodiversity objectives and 2021– 2027 EU budget)toadvance the SDGs debate.

In the global context, it will be important to promote linkages between the outcomes of the 2018 HLPF,the forthcoming Global Sustainable Development Report, and other global process of relevance to theenvironment, including the UNFCCC, the CBD, UNEA, as well as the newly launched negotiations for aglobal Pact for the Environment. There is a need to set the stage for environment to become more at theheart for the following HLPF, especially in terms of the 4-year stocktake in 2019.