Knowledge platform and network for social impact assessment of green transition policies

Fairness is one of the key objectives of the European Green Deal, as well as a precondition for the green transition to gather the necessary support from businesses and citizens. Yet, there is a lack of common culture, practices, and agreed indicators or methodologies on how to best assess the social and distributional impacts of the transition (including on disadvantaged groups). To address this, the Commission recently put forward a proposal for a Council Recommendation addressing the social and labour aspects of a just transition towards climate neutrality[[Proposal for a Council Recommendation on ensuring a fair transition towards climate neutrality, COM(2021) 801 final]], accompanying the Fit for 55 package[[Communication from the Commission ‘‘Fit for 55’: delivering the EU's 2030 Climate Target on the way to climate neutrality’, COM(2021) 550 final.]].

Proposals under this topic should:

• Contribute towards setting up a knowledge platform and network building on existing evidence from assessments of social and distributional impacts of the green transition in general, and of climate action, climate change policies and environmental policies more specifically.
• Propose theoretically founded practical and operational definitions of social impacts and develop social impact assessments/evaluations (covering at least employment, economic, distributional, generational, education, health, quality of life, gender and accessibility aspects) that are well suited to measure impacts of fair green transition policies both ex ante and ex post within and across countries.

The proposed platform should take stock of the existing methodologies to carry out social impact assessments and/or impact evaluations, and come forward with suitable, practical and easy to use, possibly new methodologies and indicators for such assessments and evaluations, which would inform policymakers and help them to gauge the effects of green transition policies (such as those inspired by the European Green Deal and the Fit for 55 package or those funded by the Just Transition Fund and the European Social Fund+). The proposed methodologies and indicators should cover relevant ranges of outcome variables, including financial and non-financial costs and benefits associated with different policies or policy options, as well as distributional (regressive or progressive) impacts and perceptions of fairness and impacts on different regions.

Proposals should also identify shortcomings regarding statistical data and methods for measuring and assessing environmental and social sustainability and societal value when appropriate in cooperation with Eurostat and national statistical institutes, relevant international organisations, networks and social research infrastructures, especially the European Social Survey. Awareness raising programmes for general public, national authorities and high interest target groups should be considered.

Furthermore, proposals should build a network of stakeholders from different contexts, including, but not limited to, researchers, policy makers (at both EU and national level), social partners and civil society. These should contribute to the activities of the project and collectively cover social themes, impact assessment and impact evaluation expertise, and knowledge of climate, energy and environmental policies. Such a network should include entities from at least 10 different EU Member States or Associated Countries representing different geographical areas, welfare models and/or transition challenges.

Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum as defined in the Decision authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe[[The decision is published on the Funding and Tenders Portal.]].