ABSTRACT
The EU commitment to become a carbon-neutral continent by the 2050s has set Europe on a necessarily ambitious, yet uncertain and challenging path. It is critically important to decarbonize rapidly, and the EU Just Transition Fund (JTF) supports this shift while seeking to ensure that no region is left behind. This final chapter of the book sums up the work undertaken across the regions, indicating that the JTF provides limited space for the voices of lower-income communities or groups, including ethnic minorities, migrants, elderly residents of former industrial neighborhoods, women, and youth. In a context of deepening discontent, growing social divisions, and polarization, heeding and exploring ways to address these concerns is an urgent and critical task because, without an inclusive process, division, alienation, and discontent with decarbonization inevitably mutually reinforce and are reinforced by broader fault lines across the European community.
This concluding chapter calls for the just transition project to be extended into a new economic project designed to address these threats to European democratic society and progress. This involves broadening the scope of justice to include place-based, relational concepts that provide a role for community co-design, agency, and co-benefit. A new economy that emerges from this would intentionally build generosity, care, trust, reciprocity, and solidarity, as these ultimately shape attitudes toward the process of decarbonization and toward governance and democracy as a whole.
This chapter explores the legal and regulatory foundations of the Just Transition within the European Union, focusing on how climate neutrality objectives have been integrated with social equity, economic competitiveness, and environmental sustainability. It outlines the development of key principles and their translation into a structured policy framework that connects goals with instruments, territories, and governance mechanisms. A central element is the Just Transition Mechanism, which aims to mitigate the socio-economic impacts of climate transition in the most affected regions. Comprising financial and strategic tools, the mechanism is implemented through region-specific plans developed in coordination with the European Commission. The chapter also examines the multilevel governance of the transition, emphasizing the importance of early and inclusive participation by public authorities and societal partners. Finally, it highlights regulatory requirements for planning, monitoring, and evaluation, illustrating how the EU seeks to ensure a place-based transition process.
