Ready for the green transition challenge? EU decarbonisation strategy and the eco-social policy agenda

Abstract

Along with the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU's socio-economic governance has been challenged by the demanding decarbonisation agenda, which was launched by the European Green Deal in 2019 with the ambition to achieve no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 and decouple economic growth from resource use, while at the same time ensuring that ‘no person and no place are left behind’. Putting this ambitious project into practice has entailed both predictable and unexpected difficulties, which largely originate from the need to reconcile oftentimes competing ecological and social goals by simultaneously addressing the social costs of green transition and the ecological risks of non-sustainable social policies. To tackle this complex eco-social policy puzzle the EU has created new instruments, including NextGenerationEU, the European Climate Fund and the Just Transition Fund, and adjusted the old ones, especially the European Structural and Investment Funds. Yet, little is known about the nature of political and policy transformations generated by the EU’s effort to cope with multiple tensions and trade-offs arising from the attempt to match green and just transition goals at the different territorial levels. Against this backdrop, the proposed panel welcomes conceptual and empirical contributions exploring the linkage between the evolving EU social agenda and the new green transition imperatives. Among other promising queries and analytical angles, the following would be of particular interest. How have the established socio-economic policy and governance settings changed to embrace the two-fold eco-social challenges of the EU decarbonisation agenda? What kind of balance exists between social and ecological priorities in the set-up of the novel policy instruments launched within NextGenerationEU and its implementing recovery and resilience strategies? What are the political dynamics and leadership that have shaped the definition and implementation of these strategies across EU countries at national and subnational levels?

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