On 9 April 2013 Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, Distinguished Fellow, CPD and Chair, Southern Voice on Post-MDGs joined a panel of eminent discussants at the launch of European Report on Development (ERD) 2013 held at the European Union’s headquarter in Brussels. Dr Debapriya agreed with core messages of the report, viz. there is a need to formulate a transformational development agenda for the post-2015 period and design an innovative framework of development cooperation to support implementation of such agenda. However, he pointed out that a number of important ingredients of that agenda has not been addressed in the report, including macroeconomic framework, technology transfer and intellectual property rights regime. He emphasised the need for EU to strengthen its leadership role in coordinating delivery of the global public goods. Dr Debapriya observed that developing countries will greatly benefit if EU can recover speedily from its current economic problems – an issue which has been overlooked in the report.
The session in Brussels was chaired by Professor Francois Bourguignon, ERD Scientific Advisor, and was addressed by EU Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs. Other distinguished members of the panel included Dr Shamshad Akhtar, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development at DESA, Dr Garry Conille, Senior Advisor to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin, World Bank Group President’s Special Envoy for the MDGs and Dr Jan Vandemoortele a co-architect of the MDGs.
