Geopolitical pressures, energy shocks and the soaring cost of living have heightened the urgency of deeply transforming the economic system, alongside the imperative of enabling a good life within planetary boundaries. Yet the green transition must happen by design, not by accident, to deliver social justice.
As access to environmental resources and exposure to environmental degradation are unequally distributed, so too do the opportunities and risks deriving from the transformation of the economy towards environmental sustainability affect social groups differently. Pursuing a just green transition means considering these distributive aspects – not aggravating existing inequalities or creating new ones – as well as considering who has access to decision-making and whose perspectives and needs are taken into account. In fact, it should be used as an opportunity to reduce already-existing and new inequities. As economic restructuring occurs, jobs in certain sectors will decline while other new green jobs will be created: a just green transition should contribute to the goal of decent work for all.
In January 2026, the European Parliament adopted the resolution ‘Just transition directive in the world of work: ensuring the creation of jobs and revitalising local economies’, calling for a comprehensive initiative on just transition to be put forward by the European Commission.
In the scattered EU policy landscape for a just transition, the crucial missing piece is a legally binding framework that ensures anticipation and management of change. The question is no longer whether a green transition needs to happen, but how it will happen: will we just let it unfold or will we manage the process? Who will have a say?
The current just transition policy landscape
An EU framework for a just transition has been gradually emerging, especially after the launch of the European Green Deal (EGD) in 2019. The just transition measures that followed represented key advancements but remained limited. Two dedicated funding instruments were developed, the Just Transition Fund (as part of the Just Transition Mechanism) and the Social Climate Fund, which can be complemented with streams from other funds (e.g. the European Social Fund Plus and the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund for Displaced Workers). The Just Transition Mechanism focusses strictly on fossil fuel-dependent regions and carbon-intensive sectors. On the other hand, the Social Climate Fund is explicitly designed to address the potential impacts of the Emission Trading System 2 (ETS2), with a focus on energy and transport poverty. The EGD also identified the European Pillar of Social Rights as a guide to ensure no one is left behind in the green transition. However, its integration with environmental policies remains underdeveloped.
More recent initiatives under the Clean Industrial Deal, such as the Union of Skills and the Quality Jobs Roadmap, attempt to combine competitiveness with just transition, through a strong focus on skills. Importantly, the Quality Jobs Roadmap goes beyond reskilling and upskilling of the workforce in support of the green transition. It highlights the commitment of the Commission under the Clean Industrial Deal to discuss with social partners a framework for anticipating and managing change and for implementing the information and consultation framework within the context of fair transitions. However, it also states that what is needed is a better application of the EU Quality Framework for Anticipation of Change and Restructuring (EU QFR), making it unclear whether there will be any revision of the framework or new ones being put forward.
The issues of anticipation and management of change and of workers’ participation in transition processes is crucial to ensure a fair transition, but current EU policies are not entirely fit for purpose. The 2013 EU QFR collects good practices for restructuring processes, for all concerned stakeholders (employers, employees and public authorities). Though there has been some adoption of such practices, the stocktaking study concludes that uptake greatly varies depending on company size, regional and national frameworks, and industrial relations, and that restructuring is still often dealt with in a reactive way. Ultimately, the QFR is a non-binding communication of which stakeholders remained largely unaware. Moreover, the fitness check of the Directives on information and consultation of workers already pointed to some shortcomings in their effectiveness, including improving management and anticipation of change, also due to limited or purely formal consultation of representative bodies on issues such as restructurings. The green transition is not even fully comparable to traditional restructurings that often follow crises or abrupt changes in market conditions. In a way, the transition is less unpredictable as we can already have knowledge about which sectors need to be scaled up, transformed, scaled down or phased out, and this change can be policy driven. This strengthens the responsibility for devising a just transition framework that mandates anticipatory strategies at all levels (company, sectoral, regional and national).
Aside being characterised by a regional or sectoral focus, current initiatives for a just transition tend also to face implementation challenges. The 2022 Council Recommendation on ensuring a fair transition towards climate neutrality encourages Member States to adopt comprehensive policy packages encompassing measures for access to essential services to tackle energy, transport and housing poverty, for supporting green quality jobs, for access to education and training, and for adapting welfare systems to the transition to climate neutrality. Crucially, it recommends a whole-of-society approach to fair transition policies, which entails engaging social partners and regional and local authorities in their design. Nonetheless, the progress on its implementation has not yet achieved the fundamental paradigm shift it envisaged. Member States have primarily focused on active labour market policies (particularly through reskilling and upskilling measures), while adaptation of welfare systems and measures to strengthen participation – particularly concerning the involvement of social partners in the anticipation and management of change – have remained limited. Notably, Spain is still the only country with a dedicated strategic framework for a just transition. Finally, the Council Recommendation envisaged more integration of employment, social and distributional considerations in the 2024 updates of the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs). However, the Commission’s assessment found a lack of analytical depth on the social and employment impacts, and, most importantly, of measures and clear funding allocation to tackle them.
Regarding funding for a just transition, the Just Transition Fund, has experienced a slow start in implementation and results are still far from targets, including in terms of job creation, though implementation is deemed to be accelerating. Additionally, the national plans of the Social Climate Fund were expected to be adopted by June 2026, but so far only five plans have been adopted (Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Malta and Greece), and only five other countries have submitted their plans. The objectives of these funding instruments should continue to be pursued, especially in light of the proposed new architecture for the next Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF), which poses a risk of fewer financial commitments for social objectives, including for just transition.
Overall, all these elements point to current EU initiatives for a just transition as still being fragmented add-ons to climate and environmental policies. A greater shift to a more anticipatory, proactive approach for managing the green transition is still needed, which could be achieved through a Just Transition Directive.
The European Parliament resolution (and its limits)
The European Parliament’s resolution of January 2026 calls for a Commission proposal to establish a Union framework to ensure a socially fair transition. The resolution focusses on the world of work: gaps are identified in the current framework regarding ‘disruptions at the workplace, workers’ rights, social protection, social dialogue and education and training opportunities’, where only intervention at Union level can ensure social upward convergence within the green transition.
The Parliament thus recommends that the Commission’s initiative should include provisions on working conditions, labour market inclusion, workers’ information and consultation, and occupational health and safety. Specifically, it calls for: a framework for anticipation and management of change revolving around information and consultation of workers, social dialogue and collective bargaining; national just transition strategies; an individual right to training for workers during working hours; support for businesses; and greater labour market intelligence on transition impacts and skills requirements.
While this resolution represents an important recognition of the role of work and territorial economic change for the green transition, it no longer calls for a legally binding framework, despite the mention of a Directive in the title.1 As highlighted above, the context of the green transition may require the adaptation of the current framework on workers’ participation, whereas the resolution only calls for an effective application of the current Directive on information and consultation of workers. It also only suggests national just transition strategies, while the QFR had already stressed how the anticipation of human capital needs and management of restructuring are multi-actor and multi-level issues. Planning for the green transition should thus be carried out at all levels and involve all relevant actors. The call for an individual right to training during working hours is crucial to strengthen workers’ participation and self-determination in the green transition, but the burden of this cannot fall on them; that is why the resolution should have maintained the ‘free-of-cost’ condition. Finally, the global solidarity dimension is missing: EU countries should consider the impact of their transition strategies on third countries and promote decent work worldwide for a global just transition, especially when natural and labour resources are being massively extracted from Global South countries.
Conclusions
EU institutions have recognised the need to integrate social and employment aspects in climate and environmental policy, and to anticipate and manage the change brought about by the green transition. However, legally binding and effective tools to guide economic transformation, not just towards decarbonisation but also social justice, are still lacking. A crucial step in this direction would be the adoption of a Just Transition Directive revolving around just transition planning at all levels, with the involvement of social partners.
Upcoming EU initiatives should already embed some of the recommendations put forward by the Parliament’s resolution, and even go beyond those. Civil society organisations (CSOs) call for the establishment of just transition plans, measures on workers’ participation and protection, stronger social conditionalities, continued funding for the just transition, and greater labour market intelligence and foresight.
The revision of the Regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union and Climate Action offers an opportunity for further integration of just transition considerations into climate and energy policy. Just transition plans should become a mandatory part of NECPs, outlining socioeconomic impacts of the planned policies, devising measures for addressing these impacts, clearly allocating funding in support of just transition measures, and reporting on just transition indicators. Ideally, NECPs would also include a territorial chapter to ensure planning across all levels.
Moreover, the Commission has identified just transition as a possible area of EU action for the Quality Jobs Act. Therefore, the Act should include provisions on promoting workplace democracy in the context of the green transition (e.g. through transition plans). This should be accompanied by the establishment of a binding framework for the anticipation of change and restructuring. Moreover, the Act should encourage Member States to establish a free-of-cost right to training during working hours, and address climate change-related risks and psychosocial risks deriving from job transitions.
CSOs also call for social criteria, alongside environmental criteria, to be further integrated in the Industrial Accelerator Act, in the Public Procurement Act and across the next MFF to support quality jobs in green sectors. Safeguards should be introduced across the next MFF to ensure that new priorities do not jeopardise funding for the just transition. National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs) should be aligned with NECPs, ensuring funding for their just transition measures.
Finally, transition impacts on labour markets and skills needs should be continuously monitored and anticipated. This could be done with already-existing EU structures (e.g. European Fair Transition Observatory and EU Policy Lab) and with the promotion of Fair Transition Observatories at the national and/or regional level.
As the EU prioritises competitiveness and industrial decarbonisation, it should still uphold its commitment to leaving no one behind: a just green transition is the only way forward.
The views and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union | Global Dialogue.
Footnotes
- 1Directives are legislative acts put forward by the European Commission that sets legally binding objectives, while leaving room for Member States to decide how to reach them. Through legislative own-initiative reports (INL) resolutions, the European Parliament can request the Commission to submit legislative proposals (including Directives), where the Commission needs to provide reasons in case it does not submit one. The INL report adopted by the Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs included a request for a legislative proposal to be put forward by 31 January 2027, recommending it to take the form of a Directive.
