Towards a Conceptual Framework for implementing the Just Green Transitions in the European Union

Abstract

The European Green Deal promotes a twinned transition that pivots on a green transition and a just transition. Accordingly, the Member States have been preparing their Territorial Just Transition Plans (TJTP) (European Commission, 2021), the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECP), and the National Long-term Strategies (NLTS) (European Commission, 2018) in order to conceptualize and operationalize their Just Green Transitions (JGT) towards achieving the European Green Deal’s carbon-neutrality by 2050 (European Commission, 2019).

This contribution aims to present a first attempt at constructing a conceptual framework that aims at forming a two-fold analytical grid which affronts the conceptualization and operationalization of the JGT of the 27 Member States to the Just Transition, Green Transition and Governance dimensions. The conceptual framework has been informed through mixed-method pivoting on desk research and data triangulations including: (i) a wide range of official publications of the EU and the member States, (ii) a theoretical framework which encompasses a critical interpretative literature review on the theoretical foundations of socio-spatial-temporal justice (Shaker & Berisha, 2024).

In order to build the conceptual analytical grid, a discourse analysis has been applied to a crosscutting between the 27 Member States’ TJTP, the NECP and the NLTS in order to grasp how the MS stand from the conceptualization and the operationalization of the JGT in regards to the Socio-Spatial-Environmental-Temporal Justice dimensions.

The outcome of the conceptual framework is expected to be applied in the empirical part of the research considering a qualitative comparative analysis applied to a number of Member States of various levels of JGT advancements, different geographical location within the macro-regional sub-classifications of Europe, various positions within the Transition Performance Index, and of different Territorial Governance and Spatial Planning Systems in Europe (Nadin, et al, 2018).