European Green Deal
The European Green Deal is the European Sustainable Growth Strategy. It is a package of policy initiatives aimed at enabling European citizens and businesses to benefit from sustainable green transition, realising the goal of no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 in the EU and decoupling economic growth from resource use. It is about protecting fragile ecosystems, investing in research and innovation, and improving the well-being of people via a path that is just and socially fair, leaving no individual or region behind.
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Quality of life data show that in most countries, the capital city has advantages compared to the regions outside the capital. In light of the continued growth of capital city populations and the concentration of resources within them, this policy brief explores the source of the advantages of capital cities in quality of life. Are these advantages mostly related to specific demographics that these cities nurture and attract? Or do these advantages stem from opportunities that major cities provide due to their scale and economic growth?
The policy brief aims to clarify why policy should focus on both the economy and society when it comes to advancing economic, social and territorial cohesion.
This section describes the research that Eurofound carries out on a topic.
Eurofound’s remit is centred around research to improve living and working conditions in the EU, which is at the heart of the EU policy priorities. This work includes topics linked with the Green Deal, like innovation and job creation, restructuring, skills and training of workers, the digital age, work sustainability, quality of life and well-being, among others.
How the Green Deal links in with Eurofound’s work
Research and innovation will be key in driving the change needed to achieve the goals set out in the Green Deal. This also means supporting people via a new Just Transition Mechanism. This will focus on the social and economic costs of the transition in the regions most affected. It will also facilitate new job opportunities, offer support to companies, as well as job search and re-skilling assistance for jobseekers likely to lose employment in the transition. Some of these topics are already covered in Eurofound research and findings could potentially feed into the work of the Just Transition Platform.
Topic: Just transition
European Commission: Just Transition Mechanismopens in new tab
Restructuring at regional level
Eurofound’s European Jobs Monitor (EJM) monitors structural change in European labour markets, analysing where jobs are being lost and where they are being created. It analyses shifts in the employment structure in terms of occupation and sector, both at Member State and regional level. Recent analysis takes the region rather than the Member States as the main unit of analysis. It shows that a growth of within-country inequality often has a strong regional dimension and places a focus on regionally unbalanced growth.
Complementing this research, the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) has been monitoring the employment impact of large-scale restructuring events since 2002 in the EU. It also examines the impact on working conditions.
Database: Restructuring events database
Publication: Effects of restructuring at regional level and approaches to dealing with the consequences
Future of manufacturing
Proposed by the European Parliament and at the request of the Commission, Eurofound carried out a pilot project from 2015 to 2019 to explore the Future of Manufacturing in Europe, including employment implications looking at the number of jobs by sector, occupation, wage profile and task content. The future orientation also included quantitative estimates of the employment implications of the Paris Climate Agreement, large increases in global tariffs and radical automation.
Surveys informing the policy debate
Both Eurofound’s European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) and European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) are carried out every four to five years across Europe and cover a wide range of topics that help to inform the policy process.
The EQLS examines both the objective circumstances of the lives of European citizens and how they feel about those circumstances and their lives in general. The EQLS indicators include environmental and social aspects of progress. This work supports the policymaking process at EU level on many aspects associated with how people live and work, including what makes capital cities the best places to live, and exploring whether rural Europe is being left behind on financial security, connectedness and life satisfaction.
The EWCS aims to provide a wide-ranging picture of Europe at work across countries, occupations, sectors and age groups. The findings draw attention to the range and scope of actions that policy actors could develop to address the challenges facing Europe today – employment levels, prolonging working life and making work sustainable, increasing the participation of women, developing productivity and innovation, and adapting to the digital and environmental challenges.
This describes the EU context.
The vital goal of European integration – improving living and working conditions and achieving upward convergence – has to be achieved in a new global setting, and in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic which is the most severe economic and social shock in living memory. The underlying long-term drivers of change remain the same, however: demography, technological development, globalisation and environmental challenges.
The Paris Climate Agreement was adopted in December 2015 by 195 countries within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It represents an international commitment to mitigate impacts of climate change worldwide.
Under the new European Commission, which took office in December 2019, came the unveiling of the European Green Deal. It outlines three concrete actions aligned with the Paris objective of limiting global warming this century to 1.5 °C:
striving to become the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050: zero net carbon emissions and cutting pollution, affordable and secure energy, smarter transport, and high-quality food
a Just Transition Fund for workers who might be impacted in the process, which will leverage public and private funds, including with the help of the European Investment Bank
a sustainable Europe investment plan, giving investors confidence to make long-term decisions on environmentally responsible projects, leading to new jobs, a cleaner environment and a better quality of life.
The Green Deal will encompass legislative changes in different sectors of the economy, including transport, energy, agriculture and construction, and industries such as steel, cement, information and communications technologies (ICT), textiles and chemicals. The first major step was the Commission’s adoption of the proposal for the first-ever European Climate Law in March 2020.
On 28 April 2020, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen issued a statement on the role of the Green Deal in the economic recovery following COVID-19. Her message is clear: ‘The European Green Deal is an agenda for transforming our economy, to make it more competitive and improve our quality of life.’ Calling it the ‘motor for the recovery’, the Green Deal is an opportunity to rebuild European economies differently following this current crisis, making them more resilient and leaving a better place for our children.
EUR-Lex: Commission Communication – Annual Sustainable Growth Strategy 2020opens in new tab
European Commission: European Climate Lawopens in new tab
European Commission Audiovisual: The role of the European Green Deal in the economic recoveryopens in new tab
United Nations Climate Change: The Paris Agreementopens in new tab
Eurofound’s work in this area links in with the Commission’s 2019–2024 priority on a European Green Deal.
About Eurofound: EU priorities: Working for a strong social Europe
European Commission: A European Green Dealopens in new tab
This is a selection of the most important outputs for this topic.
1 November 2024
This report describes the employment and social situation of young people in the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – the WB6) and also looks at employment in Türkiye.
It focuses on young people because they were particularly hard hit by COVID‐19. It disrupted the quality and quantity of their education and training, and many lost their jobs. As elsewhere, the crisis disproportionately impacted young people’s well-being in the WB6 and Türkiye.
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17 October 2024
Young people in the Western Balkans
13 January 2025
Quality of life in the EU in 2030: Results from the Living and Working in the EU e-survey
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This section provides access to all content that has been published on the topic.
