Changes from report parliamentary committee draft to plenary report

Removed20. Calls on the Commission to work with Member States so there can be greater consistency and clarity in the interpretation of EU State aid laws in so far as they apply to community and not-for-profit groups;

Added34. Recognises the shortfall in funding for bottom-up projects of scale; recommends that a continuation of the JTF fill these gaps when a need is identified; stresses the importance of providing dedicated technical support from the JTF to regions, local authorities and community groups from the earliest stages in order to strengthen their capacity for bottom-up planning and to assist potential beneficiaries in preparing high-quality, impactful projects;

Removed21. Calls on the Commission to facilitate the establishment of a green community scheme enabling local involvement in community green energy projects and allowing former workers and their families to invest or participate; notes the success of similar initiatives;

Added35. Recognises the lack of matching funding for groups in the voluntary sector applying for the JTF and calls for a simplified funding mechanism; stresses the importance of granting sufficient pre-financing of more than half of the capital cost or substantive part of the project for groups who are deemed to be of low risk, thereby ensuring that these groups avoid high interest rates and fees for matching and bridging finance, thus empowering local voluntary and community organisations in delivering transition-related projects effectively;

Removed22. Calls on the Commission to facilitate the establishment of a social training scheme for older unemployed workers who are unable to retrain and acquire new jobs; highlights that this could fill the gap between employment and retirement for some workers;

Added36. Calls for synergies between the public and private sectors to be stepped up so that they can tackle the transition process together, thus paving the way for productive conversion of the territories in question;

Removed23. Calls for the JTF to reduce the administrative burden on communities by employing ‘hands-on’ managers in towns and villages who would assist in preparing funding applications and proposals;

Added37. Highlights the negative impact of State aid rules on voluntary and not-for-profit groups; underlines, in this context, the essential role of social economy entities in providing concrete, community-based responses to the social needs of EU citizens and in supporting inclusive, people-centred solutions for a just transition; considers that the State aid rules could be relaxed, under justified conditions, for voluntary and not-for-profit groups deemed to be low-risk; calls on the Commission, in this context, to work with Member States so that there can be greater consistency and clarity in the interpretation of State aid rules insofar as they apply to community and not-for-profit groups;

Removed24. Calls for the JTF to celebrate the heritage of affected communities and establish training for heritage guides; supports the creation of visitor centres highlighting local history;

Added38. Highlights the need to develop an enhanced community benefit model, tailored to each just transition region; calls on the Member States and managing authorities, to this effect, to allocate a share of JTF resources to supporting the establishment of green community schemes, social innovation and the social economy, notably by funding citizen energy cooperatives, participatory local renewable energy production projects and initiatives that promote a local circular economy; notes that former workers and their families should be allowed to invest or participate in these projects, thereby strengthening the link between the green transition and social inclusion;

RemovedJustice before transition for the whole economy

Added39. Reiterates that housing-related cooperative or community-led projects should benefit from simplified access to JTF funding, including through lower co-financing thresholds and advance payments; calls for guidance to be provided to Member States on enabling housing actors to access funds;

Removed25. Believes that shifts in the geopolitical landscape, along with other factors, are causing massive changes to the functioning of the EU economy; urges the Commission, therefore, to review the timescales for closures of key energy players in the EU;

Added40. Calls for a reduction in the administrative burden of the JTF on communities, through the creation of specialised ‘hands-on’ managers and the development of a one-stop shop and adequate digital platforms to provide support and assistance in handling applications and managing the projects once they are selected, ensuring that these communities also have equal access to funding, thereby helping to address regional disparities;

Removed26. Calls on the Commission to encourage Member States to implement the provisions of Directive (EU) 2019/994 relating to citizen energy communities;

Added41. Calls for the JTF to support, highlight and preserve the cultural and industrial heritage of affected communities by promoting sustainable tourism development; encourages the establishment of dedicated training programmes for heritage guides so as to foster local employment and cultural continuity and support the creation of visitor centres and interpretive spaces that showcase local history, traditions and the transformation journey of these regions, thereby creating local employment and preserving cultural identity while attracting cultural and educational tourism;

Removed27. Calls on the Commission to propose a new fund, the JTF II, for the post-2027 programming period, ensuring that it operates under shared management and partnership principles; stresses that this fund should have greater financial resources than the current JTF;

Added42. Underlines the strategic importance of people’s ‘right to stay’ in their regions or local areas; calls on the Commission to issue specific guidelines on how to implement and enforce this principle across the EU and its regions; calls for stronger integration of this as a cross-cutting principle in all EU policies, so that they support the objectives of social, economic and territorial cohesion, as set out in the Treaties;

AddedSocial justice before transition for the whole economy

Added43. Underlines the key role cohesion policy plays in delivering on EU policy priorities and boosting the EU economy by contributing to just, inclusive and sustainable transition and development, promoting economic and social convergence between countries and regions, and fostering innovation and employment; regrets that, due to the limited flexibility of the current multiannual financial framework (MFF), the Commission has resorted to reorienting cohesion policy, which is not a crisis response tool but has been repeatedly called on to make up for shortcomings in budgetary flexibility or crisis response mechanisms in the MFF to the detriment of its long-term policy objectives; calls on the Commission and the Member States to accelerate the implementation of cohesion policy;

Added44. 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;

Added45. 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) 2019/994 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;

Added46. 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;

Added47. Stresses the crucial role of investments in high-quality public services in building social resilience and coping with economic crises, in particular in regions suffering from severe permanent natural and demographic challenges; highlights the need to give priority specifically to investments in basic infrastructure, social services and sustainable tourism, as well as in logistics networks and connectivity, including sustainable transport modes, with the aim of fostering resilience and innovation, while promoting inclusive growth, creating new jobs and making new business projects viable in affected territories;

Added48. 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;

Added49. Calls on the Commission to propose a new fund, the 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-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;

Added50. 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;

Added51. 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;

Added52 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.