ABSTRACT
Considering that EU-triggered transformation and transition can lead to socio-economic imbalance, it seems topical to analyse the social aspect of the EU's efforts to implement the European Green Deal (EGD) within the Visegrád Four (V4), a region haunted by its post-communist heritage and therefore being challenged by the EGD in its core. The region seems resistant to progress with EU climate policy. This chapter analyses how the EU pursues a successful implementation of the EGD despite major obstacles arising from the path dependencies of the V4. The first section explains how the V4 countries are interesting cases of transformation-induced change by EU conditionality. The second section analyses the EU's conditionality approach to the V4 countries focusing on a specific policy mechanism: The Just Transition Mechanism. The third section discusses the EU's use of dialogue through the territorial just transition plans and aims to induce change. The fourth section shows how these policy mechanisms represent a logic of consequentialism and/or a logic of appropriateness. Finally, the chapter concludes to what extent the EU has been able to induce a green transformation and how the war in Ukraine highlights existing problems between the EU and the V4.
