just transition Archives – Social Europe

Trade unions and climate change: the jobs-versus-environment dilemma

by Adrien Thomas and Nadja Dörflinger on 12th November 2020

Unions can be torn between mitigating climate change tomorrow and saving jobs today. A significant Just Transition Fund could ease that dilemma.

A Social-Green Deal, with just transition—the European answer to the coronavirus crisis

by Maja Göpel on 31st March 2020

Concluding the Social Europe series on ‘just transition’, Maja Göpel zooms out to elaborate the shift in narrative entailed.

A European Union climate agenda for COP26

by George Tyler on 27th February 2020

The EU should bring a new climate agenda to Glasgow—including a roadmap for emerging nations to embrace a future beyond fossil fuels.

Just Transition Fund can boost European coal phase-out

by Rebekka Popp and Pieter de Pous on 17th February 2020

The new Just Transition Fund puts a coal phase-out by 2030 for the whole of Europe within reach.

A just transition must help those struggling to heat their homes

by Monique Goyens on 12th February 2020

In the latest contribution to our series on ‘just transition’, Monique Goyens argues that it must address the people finding it hard to pay their energy bills.

Just transition: the pensions analogy

by Anton Hemerijck and Robin Huguenot-Noël on 5th February 2020

A ‘just transition’ must replace fear of, and resistance to, brown job losses with consensus behind social investment. Pension reform provides parallels and pointers.

The politics of a just transition: avoiding fallacious arguments

by John Weeks on 4th February 2020

John Weeks argues in our ‘just transition’ series that its success is linked to a political message of hope.

Moving beyond coal: policy lessons from across Europe

by Elena Bixel on 29th January 2020

A new report has identified good and bad practices which can inform national efforts at ‘just transition’.

Telling a different story: the media and ‘just transition’

by Natalie Bennett on 23rd January 2020

Continuing our series on ‘just transition’, Natalie Bennett argues that the media have an ethical responsibility to foster public understanding.

Beyond ‘green growth’

by Frank Hoffer on 22nd January 2020

A serious discussion of ‘just transition’ must break with a social model based on individual utility maximisation—before it breaks the biosphere.

Just transition: replacing fear with hope

by Samantha Smith on 21st January 2020

Just transition works and there are already many lessons learned. The most important is that workers must see a positive pathway ahead.

A just transition with climate and social ambition

by Teresa Ribera on 21st January 2020

The deputy prime minister of Spain responsible for the ecological transition describes the experience there of making ‘just transition’ a reality.

The Brexit endgame is upon us: deal or no deal, the transition period will end on January 1st. With a pandemic raging, for those countries most affected by Brexit the end of the transition could not come at a worse time. Yet, might the UK's withdrawal be a blessing in disguise? With its biggest veto player gone, might the European Pillar of Social Rights take centre stage? This book brings together leading experts in European politics and policy to examine social citizenship rights across the European continent in the wake of Brexit. Will member states see an enhanced social Europe or a race to the bottom?

'This book correctly emphasises the need to place the future of social rights in Europe front and centre in the post-Brexit debate, to move on from the economistic bias that has obscured our vision of a progressive social Europe.' Michael D Higgins, president of Ireland

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The macroeconomic effects of the EU recovery and resilience facility

This policy brief analyses the macroeconomic effects of the EU's Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). We present the basics of the RRF and then use the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to analyse the facility's macroeconomic effects. The simulations show, first, that if the funds are in fact used to finance additional public investment (as intended), public capital stocks throughout the EU will increase markedly during the time of the RRF. Secondly, in some especially hard-hit southern European countries, the RRF would offset a significant share of the output lost during the pandemic. Thirdly, as gains in GDP due to the RRF will be much stronger in (poorer) southern and eastern European countries, the RRF has the potential to reduce economic divergence. Finally, and in direct consequence of the increased GDP, the RRF will lead to lower public debt ratios—between 2.0 and 4.4 percentage points below baseline for southern European countries in 2023.

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Benchmarking Working Europe 2020

A virus is haunting Europe. This year’s 20th anniversary issue of our flagship publication Benchmarking Working Europe brings to a growing audience of trade unionists, industrial relations specialists and policy-makers a warning: besides SARS-CoV-2, ‘austerity’ is the other nefarious agent from which workers, and Europe as a whole, need to be protected in the months and years ahead. Just as the scientific community appears on the verge of producing one or more effective and affordable vaccines that could generate widespread immunity against SARS-CoV-2, however, policy-makers, at both national and European levels, are now approaching this challenging juncture in a way that departs from the austerity-driven responses deployed a decade ago, in the aftermath of the previous crisis. It is particularly apt for the 20th anniversary issue of Benchmarking, a publication that has allowed the ETUI and the ETUC to contribute to key European debates, to set out our case for a socially responsive and ecologically sustainable road out of the Covid-19 crisis.

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Industrial relations: developments 2015-2019

Eurofound has monitored and analysed developments in industrial relations systems at EU level and in EU member states for over 40 years. This new flagship report provides an overview of developments in industrial relations and social dialogue in the years immediately prior to the Covid-19 outbreak. Findings are placed in the context of the key developments in EU policy affecting employment, working conditions and social policy, and linked to the work done by social partners—as well as public authorities—at European and national levels.

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Read FEPS Covid Response Papers

In this moment, more than ever, policy-making requires support and ideas to design further responses that can meet the scale of the problem. FEPS contributes to this reflection with policy ideas, analysis of the different proposals and open reflections with the new FEPS Covid Response Papers series and the FEPS Covid Response Webinars. The latest FEPS Covid Response Paper by the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, 'Recovering from the pandemic: an appraisal of lessons learned', provides an overview of the failures and successes in dealing with Covid-19 and its economic aftermath. Among the authors: Lodewijk Asscher, László Andor, Estrella Durá, Daniela Gabor, Amandine Crespy, Alberto Botta, Francesco Corti, and many more.