Just transition

The Centre for Social Policy Herman Deleeck (CSB, University of Antwerp) and the OSE have secured a contract with the Belgian Federal Public Service Social Security (SPF Sécurité Sociale) to provide the academic underpinning of the ‘Social Affairs’ side of the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU during the first half of 2024. In the first phase, the OSE has been tasked with writing three background papers on a) ‘improving access to social protection’; b) ‘just transition towards climate neutrality’; and c) ‘advancing disability rights in the context of the Union of equality’.

The OSE was contracted by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) to write a preliminary assessment of whether the European Green Deal (EGD) constitutes a suitable policy framework to combine environmental and economic objectives with the pursuit of social fairness, thus ensuring a just transition towards more sustainable economies and societies. The resulting Working paper focuses on two elements that appear crucial to the achievement of a socially just transition in the framework of the EGD.

The European Social Observatory is part of the four year NEUJOBS Project, funded by the European Commission (FP7). The main objective will be to highlight the opportunities and difficulties that result from the socio-economic and ecological transitions of the labour market. In order to include all stakeholders’ positions in the study, social partners will be actively involved. Results should allow decision makers to take the most appropriate social and economic measures and avoid/reduce negative impacts on some groups of workers (older workers, migrants, Roma, etc.).

This seminar – co-organised by the Belgian Federal Public Service (FPS) Social Security and the OSE – will bring together researchers, social stakeholders and decisionmakers to discuss difficult issues, such as climate-proofing our economies and societies and the need to make European welfare states fit for the future. How conducive are the initiatives adopted by the EU to greater integration of the social and the green pillars? Should the European Semester be overhauled to explicitly take social-ecological indicators on board?

Seminar