Eco-Social Mobilisation? The Case of the Right to Energy for All Europeans Coalition

This paper explores the potential for green and social European interest groups to jointly mobilize, so as to promote synergies between ecological (eco) and social policy goals and to drive bottom-up political change at the European Union level. We aim at answering the following research question: what potential is there for European NGOs and trade unions to work together on ‘eco-social’ challenges? To answer this question, the paper presents the ‘Right to Energy for All Europeans’ coalition as a case study. The coalition is an advocacy-oriented alliance of European social and green NGOs, as well as trade unions, working for the eradication of energy poverty in Europe, mostly by attempting to exert influence on the recently-issued ‘Clean Energy for All Europeans’ legislative package. Energy poverty is chosen as an example of a salient eco-social challenge, since, in the words of the coalition itself, it “lies at the intersection of different issues: a warming world that puts people and planet at risk, increasing social inequality, and an unjust energy system”. From a methodological point of view, we rely on qualitative research methods, notably documentary analysis (scientific literature and policy documents), complemented by semi-structured interviews to several members of the above-mentioned coalition. We draw two main conclusions. First, full bottom-up coordination is undermined by structural constraints (such as interest groups' limited resources and compartmentalized policymaking), as well as by each pressure group’s commitment to specific and potentially divergent interests. Indeed, coalition-building is always strategic and it is more likely to take the form of an ad-hoc cooperation, than a formalized coordination. Nevertheless, European green and social NGOs and trade unions display a cooperative attitude towards each other. This is coherent with our second main finding, according to which European social and green interest groups have an incentive to cooperate, in light of the fact that they frequently endorse the ‘just transition’ paradigm. Potentially going against both powerful economic interests and the approach followed by European institutions, NGOs and trade unions are advocating for a vision for Europe that prioritizes social and environmental sustainability. Despite facing the well-established constraints to coalition-building, social and green interest groups are encouraged to jointly mobilize, because they are starting to see this as an efficient strategy to promote ‘just transition’.