The green transition and economic polarization in Europe: a multi-level assessment with Germany and Poland as case studies

In 2016, the European Union ratified the Paris Agreement and thereby the obligation to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by at least 40% by 2030 as compared to 1990. The 2030 Climate and Energy Framework furthermore aspires a share for renewable energy of at least 32% and an improvement of energy efficiency of at least 32.5%. The European Commission has pushed the ambitions further by formulating the European Green Deal, which is described as ‘a new growth strategy that aims to transform the EU into a fair and prosperous society, with a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy where there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases in 2050 and where economic growth is decoupled from resource use’. This position was upheld at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021. The main objective of the proposed project is to study whether and how these reforms may affect countries and regions in the EU differently, and where they bear the danger of fueling a socio-economic polarization in the European Union. Based on these insights, the project will delineate policy measures on the local, regional, and national levels that could eventually prevent such rise in socioeconomic polarization.

The project comprises four Work packages, the first three of which are concerned with three different levels of research and analysis and are characterized by a distinctive set of research methods. The fourth Work package is devoted to the synthesis of the obtained results.

1. In the first Work package the focus is on the national level. It delineates a country topology according to the vulnerabilities and potentials of the EU economies with regard to a green transition. Then, the determinants for international competitiveness in environmentally sustainable production areas are studied, pointing at the diverse levels of competitiveness of different EU economies in these areas. The study is characterized by a quantitative approach and the main methods of analysis are macroeconometrics, input-output-modeling, and the application of the concept of economic complexity.
2. The second Work package focuses on the regional level and conducts a quantitative analysis of European coal regions and regional-level preconditions towards green energy transition, using mainly spatial-econometric methods. To account for the institutional peculiarities of different Member States, the quantitative work of the first two Work packages will be complemented by two representative case studies from Germany and Poland on the local level.
3. To this end, the third Work package is devoted to a comparative analysis of two lignite regions - Konin (Poland) and Lusatia (Germany). It employs a qualitative analysis of factors influencing the success of the ‘just transition’. The methods used include mixed methods for data collection from secondary and primary sources and the qualitative comparative analysis method for data analysis.
4. The final part of the project is dedicated to the delineation of the policy implications of the results obtained in the first three Work packages. In case the socioeconomic implications of a European green transition were indeed asymmetric, adequate counter-measures would be necessary in order to prevent increasing polarization in the EU and to secure the necessary political acceptance of the reforms that are needed for Europe to meet its sustainability goals.

The expected impact of this project on the development of science is to shed light on the potentially unequal effects of the sustainable structural reforms in the EU on the national, regional as well as local levels. This paves the way for the development of policy measures that prevent an increase in inequality and facilitate an inclusive transformation towards a more sustainable Europe. The main question is, therefore, both academically attractive and socially highly relevant.