Commission publishes a ‘Toolkit for Youth Participation in the Just Transition Fund’

The European Green Deal sets out Europe’s ambition to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. Given the different starting points of various regions to face the coming changes, the Just Transition Fund was created with the aim of alleviating the socio-economic impacts of the transition to a climate-neutral economy, specifically in fossil-fuel dependent and carbon-intensive regions, so as to ensure that everyone in Europe benefits from the transition. In order for it to be successful, this transition has to be locally-owned and everyone must be involved. In particular, it is clear that young people have an important role to play. Their future will be directly affected by the upcoming transition, and their needs, opinions, fears and hopes are an important part of the dialogue.

In this context, the European Commission’s Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy published a ‘Toolkit for Youth Participation in the Just Transition Fund’. It aims to encourage more ambitious, meaningful and numerous participation opportunities for youth in the regions targeted by the Just Transition Fund, as well as to ensure that the effects of such processes will lead to better-quality strategies and interventions addressing the challenges of the transition. 

Marc Lemaître, Director-General, Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy said: ‘The ‘Youth for a Just Transition’ toolkit offers a vital support for your work to involve young people in the implementation of the Just Transition Fund in your region, whether you are a region with well-established experiences of involving youth in policy process, or a region doing this for the first time. It offers principles, best practices and strategies that can help you maximise the meaningful participation of youth in the programming, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the fund. Our collective task is to seize the opportunity offered by the transition to a cleaner, more efficient economy: the opportunity to give new life to our regions for decades to come. We will only succeed if we share this journey with Europe’s youth.’ 

The toolkit is accompanied by an Annex providing detailed outlines of 30 best practice examples of youth participation from across Europe that are referenced throughout the toolkit. 

This toolkit is addressed in particular at regional and local policy-makers responsible for implementation of the Just Transition Fund, as well as other stakeholders involved in the process. A special group of stakeholders in this context is the young people living in the transition regions, who could get inspired by the toolkit to actively advocate for their involvement in the JTF implementation. The toolkit can also be useful for other policies addressing the transition.

For more information, get in touch with REGIO-G1-HEAD-OF-UNIT@ec.europa.eu.