In Italy, the “Just Transition” has two specific focus areas: Sulcis Iglesiente in Sardinia and the province of Taranto in Puglia. For these two regions, the European Commission has allocated 1.21 billion euros under the Just Transition Fund. Sulcis was home to Italy’s last coal mine, which employed 350 direct workers at the time its phase-out was planned, in an area with a youth unemployment rate of 35.7%. Taranto is home to the former ILVA, Europe’s largest steel plant, with approximately 10,000 direct employees and another 10,000 in related industries. The Fund was designed for them. In the European debate on industrial competitiveness, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, and energy costs for 2024 and 2025, “just transition” also describes something else: the need to ensure that the transition does not put European companies at a disadvantage, does not raise energy bills, and does not penalize less developed countries. The issues are different, but the term is the same.
The concept originated in the American labor movement of the 1970s and is attributed in academic literature to activist Tony Mazzocchi, who used it to protect workers in polluting industries threatened by new environmental regulations.The International Labor Organization formalized it in November 2015 with specific guidelines. The ILO’s definition is: “Making the economy greener in the fairest and most inclusive way possible for all stakeholders, creating opportunities for decent work and leaving no one behind.” The preambleto the Paris Agreement of the same year is more limited in scope: it refers to “the imperatives of a just transition for the workforce and the creation of decent and quality jobs.” The focus is explicitly on the workforce.
The European Just Transition Fund, established in 2021 with a total of 17.5 billion euros, has put this concept into practice in 96 specific regions across the European Union, all of which have been identified as dependent on coal, peat, oil shale, or greenhouse gas-intensive industrial processes. In Italy, the fund is active only in Sulcis and Taranto. The plan for Sulcis calls for the reskilling of 2,250 workers. The plan for Taranto calls for the reskilling of 4,300 workers and the development of green hydrogen in the region. The funds must be committed by 2026.
The expansion of the concept beyond the workforce has been advocated in academic and institutional circles. In 2023, the United Nations Development Policy Committee adopted a broader definition: a just transition as a process that ensures “no one is left behind or pushed back” in the transition to low-emission economies. This interpretation includes consumers, communities, and developing countries. The debate over the legitimacy of this expansion is real: as the scope widens, protection increases. But the term also loses the operational specificity that made it possible to design concrete tools.
An analogy might help. A solidarity fund for evicted tenants has a specific target audience: those who lose their homes for a specific reason. If the same fund is also sought by those who simply find their rent too high, it serves a different purpose. That purpose may be legitimate, but the name no longer describes the same thing.
Herein lies the verifiable ambiguity in the European discourse of 2024 and 2025. In the discussion on the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, several developing countries have invoked the just transition as an argument against a mechanism that penalizes their exports. In the debate on industrial competitiveness, trade associations have used it as a reason to limit regulations that increase production costs. In the debate over energy bills, national governments have invoked it to oppose the rapid alignment of prices with the cost of emissions. In all three cases, the group to be protected is different: poor countries, businesses, and consumers. The justification invoked is the same.
This column explores climate terms whose technical meaning differs from their common perception. ““Just transition” introduces a mechanism distinct from the others: not a term with a technical meaning misunderstood by the public, but a term with a historically defined subject (workers and communities in the fossil fuel industries) that, in political discourse, has broadened to the point where almost any slowdown in the transition can be presented as “just.” The European Fund is providing funding for Sulcis and Taranto. The rest of the European debate is calling for a just transition in other areas.
The next time you read “just transition” in a political statement or an industry press release, there’s only one question to ask: just for whom? If the answer doesn’t specify a particular group, the term isn’t fulfilling the technical function for which it was coined.
