It is a broadly shared view that just transition has different interpretations, depending on geographic region (Global South or Global North) or the level of the economy (company, sector, region, national or supranational level). As Stevis and Felli (2020) put it, just transition has different scales, breadth and depth. Stakeholders’ roles and interests are also different, and strategies and practices of just transition can be targeted to different groups, often appearing as ‘just transition for us’, while the International Labour Organization pleads for ‘just transition for all’.
These differences matter for workers because the question of who defines what ‘just’ is shapes who gets a seat at the table. Trade unions, employers and governments have not always understood it in the same way, and unions have often pressed for stronger guarantees on jobs, income and bargaining rights than employers or governments were willing to commit to.
Instead of looking for an ideal definition of a just transition, what we see is not merely a diversity of interpretations, but also that policies and practices of past decades frame just transition with very different and often inconsistent narratives. Some of these narratives coexist, but the dominant narrative is shifting over time.
The result of these zigzags is that these narratives are also getting mixed up, and even EU Commission documents use unclear language about what just transition is, leaving both the ‘just’ (often substituted by ‘fair’ or ‘twin’) and the ‘transition’ to rival interpretations. This also means that the overarching just transition claim (at least by the EU) of ‘leaving no one behind’ is being hollowed out.
From environmental justice to climate transition
The trade union origins of the just transition idea were explicitly positioned within the environmental justice movement on the principle of proximity to the source of pollution.
The concept that originated in North America in the 1970s was coined by US trade union leader Tony Mazzocchi in connection with the closure of a toxic chemical plant in the US. The recognition was that jobs that harm the environment and the health of workers should not be maintained, but that workers needed to be compensated and offered a future perspective. The key aspect of this narrative was to resolve the apparent ‘jobs vs. environment’ dilemma.
It is important to note that the concern was linked to environmental harm based on the concept of proximity (toxic pollution for the local population and health risk for workers). Local pollution and health risks have a concrete and immediate effect on humans and can also be addressed by terminating the source of pollution. Cause and effect are clear and direct. The concept of environmental justice was based on the principle that workers, communities and families have the right to live in a safe and clean environment.
The language of just transition was adopted and spread, but with the emergence of the climate protection movement it was also reinterpreted to address the global challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss. This was, however, more controversial than dealing with local pollution or occupational health and safety risks. Cause and effect in the context of climate change are distant in time and space.
While local action to reduce CO2 emissions has a negligible effect on global warming, it has an immediate effect on the structure of the economy and thus on jobs. There are no immediate climate rewards for those who reduce their individual carbon footprint, but they must bear any costs in the here and now, only to be offset in the longer term by reduced costs.
From environmental justice to climate transition for workers, people and regions
The period 2015–2020 was dominated by the ‘green deal’ narrative inspired by national commitments under the Paris Agreement to address climate change, and resulting in policy-driven efforts based on strong regulatory frameworks such as, for example, the European Green Deal.
The Paris narrative, framed as ‘climate cultural hegemony’, was mostly driven by ethical and solidarity-based motives. In this context, workers and workers’ representatives were also seen as agents for climate action (labour environmentalism). In practice, this agency was expected to run through social dialogue, collective bargaining and worker representation in transition planning.
The result was that climate change mitigation policies became a driver for reconstructing the fundamentals of the economy. It was at this point that ‘green transition’ was often used as a synonym for ‘just transition’, ‘green’ being viewed as ‘just’ for the planet, for climate-vulnerable regions, for biodiversity and for future generations.
Just transition was not only seen as a commitment to advance an ambitious climate change mitigation policy backed by global solidarity and concern about the livelihood of future generations, but mainly as a policy to fend off the potentially negative effects of climate policies themselves (on jobs and living costs).
In practice and in the European Green Deal context, just transition was mostly focused on defending people and workers from the risks and harms of the green transition itself (addressing employment and the distributional effects of climate policies).
Energy sovereignty and competitiveness under geopolitical challenges
With the energy crisis and geopolitical strains, there is nothing left of the ‘climate cultural hegemony’ perspective. The focus is on energy security and sovereignty, with the green (energy) transition being presented as the way to achieve that.
While this is true, the process takes time and depends on immense investment, with returns only visible in the mid or long term. At the same time, the transition costs appear immediately and again disproportionately affect vulnerable groups.
Today, the energy transition is taking place in Europe for geopolitical reasons of national and continental sovereignty. Just transition policies are becoming more defensive, balancing between responding to short-term affordability challenges, often by subsidising fossil energy and watering down climate policy targets, and supporting the green transition.
Why do these shifts matter?
There are three aspects of this shifting ‘just transition’ narrative.
One is that the earlier focus on climate ambition has lost its significance. In the past, this appeared as an element of the ‘just’ dimension, in the form of ‘climate justice’. This implied that a transition could only be considered if it came with a significant climate ambition.
The second is that ‘just transition’ policies have become more defensive, with less emphasis on managing change in a forward-looking way. This shift was already evident in the trend towards the use of the ‘twin transition’ narrative that, by analogy with the digital transition (in particular, the gig economy and AI), viewed the green transition as a disruptive force in a world of work that needed to be tamed.
The third aspect of the shifting narrative of ‘just transition’ came with the breakdown of multilateralism, geopolitical tensions and the two consecutive (fossil) energy crises. ‘Just transition’ policies are now interlinked with industrial policies and a competitiveness agenda, as well as with energy security. These policies (most obviously the EU’s) are struggling to achieve even the narrow objective of addressing green transition-related burdens and new sources of inequality, while transition-related inequalities are at risk of increasing further.
As a result, the meaning of ‘just’ is becoming increasingly blurred. It is less and less based on climate policy ambition and protecting livelihoods, and more about affordable energy for both households and industry (competitiveness). Ethical and climate-related reasons inherited from the Paris Agreement are things of the past; the ecological transition is seen as a tool of sovereignty against fossil fuel vassalage. This view brings with it the risk that an ambitious green transition agenda is starting to be seen as a hazard, and a corresponding ‘just transition’ policy would mean slowing down the pace of the transition.
For workers, this has meant that support tends to arrive after their job losses, in the form of redundancy payments or early retirement, rather than through anticipatory planning, retraining and the creation of comparable new jobs.
For trade unions, this trilemma sharpens a strategic choice. They can press for worker participation early in the transition planning, for sectoral bargaining over its terms, and for conditions attached to public investment, or they can be left negotiating compensation once decisions have already been made.
All this demonstrates how complex the current political constellation is when it comes to the ‘climate emergency – ‘just transition’ – geopolitics and energy sovereignty’ trilemma.
Bela Galgoczi is an Associate Researcher at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) since 2026, following a long career as Senior Researcher for the same organisation. His current research focus is a just transition towards a carbon neutral economy with focus on fair labour market transitions in carbon intensive sectors and regions.
Image credit: Andreas Gücklhorn via Unsplash