Varieties of Eco-Social Integration in the EU’s Energy Policy. A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Member States’ National Energy and Climate Plans

The European Green Deal (EGD) aspires to deliver climate neutrality while ensuring that the green transition remains just and socially legitimate. Yet, the social dimension of the European Union’s (EU) climate governance remains largely neglected and its implementation uneven across member states, particularly in the face of escalating turbulence. This paper seeks to examine how EU member states integrate ecological and social objectives in their energy transition strategies, focusing on the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) as key instruments of the EGD and the Governance Regulation. Following the notion of eco-social risk as a distributive challenge emerging at the intersection of decarbonisation and welfare protection, this paper analyses policy responses to energy poverty across EU member states. To explain why some states deliver more integrated and socially responsive NECPs than others, the paper advances a novel theoretical framework combining the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) from socio-technical systems theory with the policy integration approach. The MLP captures how landscape shocks destabilise national energy regimes and open windows for policy change. Yet, by itself, the MLP cannot explain the direction of such change. The policy integration approach complements it by highlighting the political and institutional mechanisms through which complex socio-technical challenges are addressed. Integrating these two frameworks, the paper argues that high eco-social policy integration emerges when (1) landscape pressures problematise energy inequality, (2) national regimes are open and politically capable of cross-sectoral coordination, and (3) niches provide mature policy innovations and epistemic re-sources for just transition. Empirically, the study applies Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to the NECPs of the 27 EU member states to identify configurations of structural, political, and technological conditions that lead to integrated eco-social responses. Policy integration is operationalised through the dimensions of coherence (alignment of environmental and social goals), consistency (mutual reinforcement between instruments), and congruence (synergy in implementation and timing),ing thereby reflect the degree to which member states embed considerations of justice, vulnerability, and affordability within their NECPs. By connecting socio-technical transition theory to the study of the policy processes, the paper contributes to understanding how the EGD can achieve just, legitimate, and democratically resilient implementation under conditions of turbulence. It argues that eco-social policy integration is not merely a technical exercise in coordination but a crucial mechanism for sustaining the political legitimacy of the green transition. In doing so, it speaks to ongoing debates about how the EU can reconcile the competitiveness of energy policy with a justice dimension, and accelerate decarbonisation without neglecting distributional implications.