The European Commission launched a call for proposal under the Horizon Europe Programme titled “A sustainable future for Europe II (HORIZON-CL2-2022-TRANSFORMATIONS-02)”. The Horizon Europe is EU research & innovation framework programme for 2021-2027, its overarching goals are: to strengthen the EU’s scientific and technological bases and the European Research Area (ERA); to boost Europe’s innovation capacity, competitiveness and jobs; and to deliver on citizen’s priorities and sustain our socio-economic model and values. Moreover, there is a particular focus on creating impact or the European Green Deal, the digital and sustainability transition.
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, accompanying the Fit for 55 package. 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. Moreover, proposals should focus on 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 expected outcomes are:
- Development of strategic and integrated policies at European and international level, with a focus on policies and interventions geared towards just green transitions;
- Formulation of recommendations and action plans for strengthening social and labour impact assessments and intervention quality standards, while taking into account the social and legal feasibility and costs of policies geared towards the green transition;
- Provision of evidence and assessment of the social acceptability and feasibility and the distribution of costs and benefits of different policy instruments geared towards just green transitions;
- Support to the exchange, dissemination and uptake of best practices.
The deadline for applications is the 21st of September 2022.
For more information, please visit the Commission’s website.
To learn more about current calls for proposals or Eurodiaconia’s funding events, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our our Projects and EU Funding Officer Giorgia Signoretto at giorgia.signoretto@eurodiaconia.org.