What changed

MOTION FOR A EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RESOLUTION

P10_TA(2025)0186

on the roleRole of cohesion policy in supporting the just transition

(2024/2121(INI))

Committee on Regional Development

PE769.954

European Parliament resolution of 10 September 2025 on the role of cohesion policy in supporting the just transition (2024/2121(INI))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to the Commission communication of 4 March 2021 on the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan (COM(2021)0102),

– having regard to the Commission communication of 14 July 2021 entitled ‘“Fit for 55”: delivering the EU’s 2030 Climate Target on the way to climate neutrality’ (COM(2021)0550),

– having regard to the Commission report of February 2024 entitled ‘Forging a sustainable future together – Cohesion for a competitive and inclusive Europe: report of the High-Level Group on the Future of Cohesion Policy’,

– having regard to the Commission communication of 27 March 2024 on the 9th Cohesion Report (COM(2024)0149),

– having regard to the Commission communication of 26 February 2025 entitled ‘The Clean Industrial Deal: A joint roadmap for competitiveness and decarbonisation’ (COM (2025)0085),(COM(2025)0085),

– having regard to the Commission communication of 5 March 2025 entitled ‘The Union of Skills’ (COM(2025)0090),

C. whereas disparities remain in the speed of the digital transition and connectivity across Europe, especially in rural and remote areas; whereas many affected regions lack basic infrastructure and essential services, which makes it difficult for them to attract productive investment that leads to sustainable economic recovery; whereas more investment is needed to accelerate the shift to sustainable and smart mobility and to modernise and diversify the infrastructure systems in order to enhance accessibility, promote innovation and support the transition to a greener economy; whereas cohesion policy should play a strategic role in bridging these gaps, promoting territorial cohesion and ensuring no region is left behind in the transition;

✦ Wording Moves recitals D and E to a different position without changing their content.

D. whereas many of the poorest and most vulnerable regions are located in the eastern part of the EU; whereas the war in Ukraine has an additional negative impact on these regions;E. whereas the physical disconnection and isolation of islands from the mainland constitutes a permanent structural disadvantage that affects multiple aspects of economic and social life, including access to the labour market, education, healthcare, mobility and public services; whereas the limited territory of islands significantly restricts opportunities for professional upskilling and reskilling, thereby limiting workers’ ability to adapt to structural changes or sectoral shifts, such as those driven by the green and digital transitions; whereas, in many cases, this lack of alternatives forces workers to leave their home regions in order to access employment opportunities elsewhere, effectively undermining their ‘right to stay’ and contributing to depopulation and brain drain in insular territories;

D. whereas many of the poorest and most vulnerable regions are located in the eastern part of the EU; whereas the war in Ukraine has an additional negative impact on these regions;

E. whereas the physical disconnection and isolation of islands from the mainland constitutes a permanent structural disadvantage that affects multiple aspects of economic and social life, including access to the labour market, education, healthcare, mobility and public services; whereas the limited territory of islands significantly restricts opportunities for professional upskilling and reskilling, thereby limiting workers’ ability to adapt to structural changes or sectoral shifts, such as those driven by the green and digital transitions; whereas, in many cases, this lack of alternatives forces workers to leave their home regions in order to access employment opportunities elsewhere, effectively undermining their ‘right to stay’ and contributing to depopulation and brain drain in insular territories;

F. whereas the EU Just Transition Fund (JTF) is, and should continue to be, an important tool in ensuring people living in territories affected by the shift to climate neutrality are not left behind and in contributing to the objective of enabling regions and people to address the social, employment, economic and environmental impacts of the transition; whereas the absorption rates remain too low at this stage of the programming period;

J. whereas many of the industries hit the hardest by decarbonisation faced unfavourable working conditions and a dependency on seasonal workers; whereas the green and digital transitions must go hand in hand with social justice; whereas just transition should help in addressing workplace discrimination, ensuring decent and quality working conditions, raising labour standards and ensuring effective safety nets and protection mechanisms for the workers whose jobs are affected;

✦ Formal Updates decimal separators in numbers from periods to commas, aligning with EU style.

K. whereas tourism is a key sector of the EU’s economy, directly and indirectly contributing to over 10 % of the EU’s GDP, and plays a vital role in enhancing competitiveness, social well-being and sustainable job creation, particularly in regions heavily reliant on tourism; whereas tourism has the potential to contribute significantly to territorial cohesion, particularly in remote, rural, coastal, outermost and island regions, and can support economic diversification and just transition in areas facing structural challenges, population decline, or dependency on carbon-intensive industries; whereas the EU’s tourism industry, largely composed of 2.32,3 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), employs approximately 12.312,3 million people and represents a major economic activity with strong multiplier effects across various sectors; whereas cohesion policy should support sustainable tourism strategies as part of the just transition, fostering resilience, innovation and green and digital transformation in the tourism sector, while promoting inclusive growth and preserving cultural and natural heritage;

L. whereas the EU, unlike its main competitors, is a world leader in emissions reduction, while tackling many challenges triggered by the complex global geopolitical and economic context;

44. Believes that shifts in the geopolitical landscape, along with other factors, are resulting in massive changes to the functioning of the EU economy; underlines that the JTF should maintain a decisive role in the process of decarbonisation; calls on the Commission and the Member States to examine the timescales for the closure of key energy players in the EU, and to mitigate the impact of these closures, ensuring ‘social justice in transition’ for workers;

✦ Formal Corrects the directive number from 2019/994 to 2019/944.

45. Calls for special consideration to be given to the need to promote electricity connections, to increasing grid hosting capacity and to strengthening energy storage systems, as necessary components of an effective energy transition; calls on the Commission to encourage the Member States to fully implement the provisions of Directive (EU) 2019/9942019/944 related to citizen energy communities, providing specific measures to protect vulnerable households from energy poverty in JTF regions; believes, in this context, that support should be given to local community-led green infrastructure and renewable energy projects, such as solar, wind and hydropower installations, as well as sustainable transportation, which stimulate local economies, offering great potential for the creation of local jobs in construction, engineering, maintenance and related industries;

46. Highlights the importance of the Member States in promoting sectoral social dialogue and collective bargaining, especially in newly emerging green industries, and also in ensuring the inclusion of small and medium-sized businesses, including social economy enterprises; stresses that the Minimum Wage Directive represents a great opportunity to strengthen collective bargaining on wage-setting and the presence of the social partners in emerging sectors;

48. Calls on the Commission to focus, in particular, on islands and outermost regions to support them in addressing their serious socio-economic challenges deriving from the process of transitioning towards the EU’s 2030 targets for energy and climate and a climate-neutral economy in the EU by 2050, and to work with the Member States to earmark specific amounts from their national allocations in the framework of their territorial just transition plans; calls for concrete compensatory measures that offset negative consequences for islands’ economic, social and territorial cohesion in the process of transitioning to a cleaner economy and society, that may arise due to their dependence on the aviation and maritime sectors; calls, therefore, for islands to be made a priority in the development of infrastructure aimed at decarbonising air and maritime transport;

✦ Changes the call for a new fund to regret that the Commission did not propose a stand-alone JTF, and calls for its continuation.

49. CallsRegrets onthat the Commission tohas proposenot proposed a newstand-alone fund,Just Transition Fund (JTF) in its recent proposals on the future multiannual financial framework (MFF); calls therefore for the continuation of the JTF through a JTF ‘II’, for the post-2027 programming period so as to provide direct support for households and communities to transition, and to enable an intervention capacity commensurate with the scale of the socio-economicsocio-economic, employment, demographic and environmental impacts of the transition towards the EU’s 2030 energy targets; stresses that this fund should operate under shared management and partnership principles, within the framework of cohesion policy, and stresses that it should have its own predictable budget allocation, ensuring its autonomy from extraordinary crisis response instruments, such as NextGenerationEU;

50. Urges the Commission to streamline and align financial instruments under the post-2027 MFF, ensuring a coherent and coordinated approach to supporting just transition strategies through JTF ‘II’; highlights that the scope of JTF ‘II’ could be expanded, in line with proposals from the Member States, with measures to be put in place until such a time as jobs lost locally are replaced in the local area, and should be focused on reconciling sustainable development with competitiveness, ensuring that regions in transition can thrive economically without compromising their environmental and social goals; stresses the need for plans for just transition areas that adopt a proactive approach to also anticipate the potential upcoming transformative processes and that include a clear commitment to developing strategic regeneration and development initiatives, with a particular focus on enterprise development and job creation in the areas most affected by the closure of fossil fuel production facilities; highlights that Member States have certain flexibility on their pathway to decarbonisation, in line with agreed EU targets, taking into account the technological and economic perspective, and depending on local and regional needs;

51. Stresses the need for having in place a more precise allocation criteria and delimitation of the territorial scope of the funds, to focus specifically on local and regional authorities, under the NUTS 3 administrative level; underlines the importance that the funds reach the regions particularly affected by the transition to a climate-neutral economy due to the sectoral character of their economy, or the closure of carbon-intensive installations, and that investments are not concentrated only in the large urban centres of the NUTS 3 area; stresses the urgency of also integrating territorial and demographic indicators in the allocation of JTF funds, such as population ageing, youth outmigration, sustained population decline and depopulation and the impact of transient employment;

✦ Formal Adds a period after the paragraph number, a typographical correction.

5252. Believes that the good governance framework is key in implementing the just transition; underlines that local and regional authorities play a pivotal role in ensuring the effective design, implementation and monitoring of EU programmes, given their proximity to citizens and deep understanding of territorial needs; highlights the importance of upholding the partnership principle and the European code of conduct on partnership, and of emphasising the place-based approach, to ensure the full participation of local and regional authorities, social partners and civil society organisations in the governance, selection and monitoring of funded projects, in line with the multilevel governance principle laid down in Regulation (EU) 2021/1060;

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53. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the European Economic and Social Committee, the European Committee of the Regions and the national and regional parliaments of the Member States.

EXPLANATORY STATEMENT

The European Commission will soon publish their midterm review of the EU JTF. This will be a crucial moment for the continuation of the fund, and provide a snapshot of how it functions currently. In this context, the rapporteur feels that this is a timely report which aims to examine the implementation of the JTF and propose targeted measures to enhance its effectiveness in supporting communities undergoing transition in the future, and also in the present.

The JTF was introduced as a key instrument to mitigate the negative effects of decarbonisation and ensure that no region or worker is left behind. However, according to the rapporteur, the EU JTF, while having benefited many across the EU, has many challenges which need to be addressed. In essence this file seeks to ensure that ‘justice before transition’ is central to the ethos that will in turn lead to the success of the fund.

The transition to a carbon neutral economy by 2050 has brought significant socio economic challenges for regions historically dependent on fossil fuel based industries. In some cases, entire local economies have been built around these industries, leading to potential job losses of tens of thousands of people, demographic shifts, and economic stagnation. A failure to address these issues adequately, risks exacerbating regional disparities and increasing economic inactivity in these regions. Moreover, the diverse economic and social realities of these regions require tailored solutions, in a flexible framework, rather than a one size fits all approach.

However, excessive administrative burden has discouraged the uptake of the fund, and absorption rates tell this story clearly. Furthermore, these complex rules make it very difficult for community and voluntary groups to access the fund without outside help. This is evidence that we must see further simplification of rules and procedures. However this must be simplification that benefits the stakeholders implementing the fund, while fully preserving the shared management model.

The JTF must not only address immediate challenges but also lay the foundations for a sustainable economic future. With major geopolitical shifts and rapid technological changes reshaping the EU’s economic landscape, a post-2027 JTF II should be established with greater financial resources and a strong commitment to shared management and partnership principles. This will ensure that the Just Transition process continues to evolve and deliver for communities most affected by the green transition.

The rapporteur emphasises the need for the preparation of coherent strategic plans in each Member State. There needs to be a focus on reaching a social agreement with workers affected over the period 2025 to 2049. We must see a simplification of the process, whereby local lands, buildings and other assets, owned by the Member States, could be used in the short term after closures for new JTF employment projects - particularly in the area of renewables and with an emphasis on working with local communities, social enterprises and the private sector. This file also calls on the European Commission to encourage Member States to fully implement the provisions of European Directive 2019 994 relating to Citizen Energy Communities.

In conclusion, the rapporteur believes that by implementing the proposed recommendations and seeking justice before transition for thousands of workers, the JTF can effectively contribute to ensure we help those who need it most, and that affected regions receive the necessary support to build resilient, diversified, and sustainable economies for the future.