Can Europe lead a Just Transition?

Using data to predict the future

With the report, McCauley and Pettigrew aimed to identify the extent to which the EU can lead in delivering a just transition which places social justice at the heart of a new sustainable, inclusive, and green bottom-up community-driven future for Europe. The researchers looked at open-access data to assess how well each member state performed at the key components of the green deal and how it aligned with the European Pillar of Social Rights. The pillar consists of 20 principles, such as gender equality, unemployment benefits, fair wages, childcare, and support for children. 

Four overarching policy recommendations

By exploring how the social justice indicators relate to each European Green Deal action area, McCauley and Pettigrew made policy recommendations for each action area. The overall recommendations of the researchers come down to the following:

1. Justice is more than citizen inclusion; by embracing multiple understandings of justice, such as fair working conditions, more sustainable and accepted policies will be encouraged.
2. Unleash the power of social justice; the individual actions of each Green Deal theme should explicitly consider their impact on justice processes and outcomes and how they can proactively improve both social justice and Green Deal actions.
3. Scrutinise data for justice-aware policy action; transparent, accountable, and publicly accessible indicators and data on each area of the Green Deal must be developed as a priority.
4. Territories of ‘relative need’ not ‘fossil fuels’; the terms of application to the Just Transition Fund should be expanded from carbon-intensive regions to other territories of member states who are lagging on the full range of social justice and Green Deal issues.

Report should inspire organisations to develop and use ‘justice-focused’ metrics

Last week, McCauley and Pettigrew presented the findings at a round table discussion hosted by Solidar. At the discussion, representatives from European social and economic organisations were present. McCauley hopes the research report helps organisations, from civil society to EU legislators, on “how to quantify social justice for better decision-making models so that fairer policies can emerge, which in an era of increasing social inequality and contestation, is of paramount importance.”