Introductory remarks from Philippe Lamberts (Greens/EFA,BE), Chair, at the Beyond Growth 2023 Conference in Brussels. The Beyond Growth 2023 Conference is a multi-stakeholder event aiming to discuss and co-create policies for sustainable prosperity in Europe, based on a systemic and transformative approach to economic, social and environmental sustainability and its encompassing governance framework. The transcription is the result of an automated process. Please check against delivery.

Brussels

conference

statement

LAMBERTS, Philippe (Greens/EFA, BE)

economic growth (T)

European Green Deal (T)

Beyond Growth 2023 Conference Opening Plenary - Limits to Growth : where do we stand and where do we go from here?: Opening statement by Philippe Lamberts (Greens/EFA,BE), Chair

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Chair, Sound missing until 01:57.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Chair, It's about keeping it as a good home for humanity. That's what we are going to to discuss. I need to give you two housekeeping recommendations. First, if you require textual interpretation, there's a speech to text tool on the website that you can use in 23 languages. So use that if you need it, because indeed we are going to have a lot spoken in English, maybe in a few other languages, but I can fully understand that not everyone is comfortable with that.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Chair, And then we are going to try to have interactivity, and of course with such big attendance, it's not always easy. And for that, we are going to use a Slido tool. There's links, there's QR codes at the entrance, but also on the on the website. So use it to ask your questions. The interesting thing about Slido is that we can see what questions are most popular. What are the ones that really need to be to be asked first.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Chair, But without further ado, in order to to stay on schedule, I would like to welcome and give the floor to President Roberta Metsola.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Chair, Roberta is a young President of the European Parliament. She is actually only the third woman to be president of this Parliament, and she's a forward thinker, no doubt. It was not a hard job for me to convince her to help us, because of course, without the full engagement of the Parliament as an institution the twenty MEPs who organised this conference would not have succeeded.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Chair, This is really thanks to her, her commitment. We do not belong to the same political family. Neither do I, with Ursula von der Leyen. Yet we are demonstrating here that we can work together for a common cause. So, Roberta, the floor is yours.