1 Introduction

In the last decades, climate policy making in Europe has predominantly been informed by technocracy and beliefs regarding the cost efficiency of the market. Protests such as those of the ‘gilets jaunes’ (yellow vests) in France against increasing fuel taxes have shown that the green transition is not only associated with material conflicts of redistribution but also inherently political. Decarbonising societies requires the negotiation of conflicts of interest between different policy goals. It is vital to investigate policymakers’ ideas of the green transition and the social dimension within that, as they shape policy design. However, analyses on how this intersection is received and realised in the policymaking sphere remain lacking (Bohnenberger 2022). This article provides insights into the current policy discourses by analysing what policymakers’ ideas of the social dimension within the green transition are.

How the ecological, social, and economic dimension can be combined, has increasingly been the subject of research (Adloff and Neckel 2019; Mandelli 2022; Nenning et al. 2023; Schulze Waltrup 2023; Zimmermann 2024). This article is an inventory of a rapidly evolving research and policy field, synthesising academic perspectives into an analytical framework of the social dimension within the green transformation. Different approaches to climate change have been established, which differ in terms of their problem definition of climate change and their understanding of the human-nature relationship. This results in paradigms with different envisioned degrees of transformation: ranging from system continuation and only gradual changes—ecological modernization or Green Growth—right up to overthrowing governance and economic structures—transformation or Degrowth (Adloff and Neckel 2019; Schulze Waltrup 2023). Each of these paradigms has inherent conceptions of the relationship between the state and society, normatively presupposing who should receive what and why and negotiating ideas about inequality, redistribution, and well-being (Hirvilammi and Koch 2020). These different understandings of socio-political order predefine the role that social policy can and should play within the distributional conflict that the green transformation inherently presents. The conceptualization discusses different interpretations of the social dimension within Green Keynesianism and the Green Economy as varieties within Green Growth, and considers sustainable welfare and climate justice as suggestions from the Degrowth literature. These paradigms are categorized based on their definitions of climate change and their relationship to growth, their understanding of the relationship between the state and market and of the welfare state, their justification for social policy (SP) and their understanding of justice and well-being.

Policymakers’ ideas of this social dimension are analysed based on 41 expert interviews with policymakers in Germany and at the European Union (EU) level in relevant positions. Using critical discourse analysis, dominant, and consequently neglected narratives are identified. The article adopts a perspective of discursive institutionalism towards policymaking, which highlights the role of ideas in explaining change and shows how actors use such ideas to exert power and persuade others (Saurugger 2013; Schmidt 2008). Germany and the EU represent interesting case studies because both have been making efforts to formulate ambitious climate policy, but have come to different policy outcomes (the EU being more neoliberal and Germany leaning more towards regulation), which interact in a multi-level governance setting (Jordan et al. 2021).

This article will proceed as follows: in the next section, I provide an overview of the different social conceptions within the green transition. Section 3 will describe the methods used and the data gathered. Section 4 contains the findings from the interviews and elucidates the current policy discourses surrounding the social dimension of the green transition. Proponents of the Green Economy narrowly argue for the appeasement of potential social upheaval owing to climate policy, whereas Green Keynesian representatives argue for a role for the welfare state that mediates between different interests within society and enables democratic participation through redistribution. Degrowth perspectives critically discussing Global North affluence and its exploitative structures remain scarce among policy makers. The fifth section offers a discussion and conclusion.

2 The social dimension of the green transition in the academic literature

Social and environmental policies have long been distinct fields, rarely talking to one another. After pioneers such as Gough, Fitzpatrick, and Cahill (Cahill 2018; Cahill and Fitzpatrick 2002; Fitzpatrick 2014; Gough 2013, 2015, 2022) reflected on the ecology of social states, thereby laying the groundwork in this arena, the field of the interrelation of social and climate policy is now evolving under the term of ‘eco-social policy’. This article presents an overview of the current ideas circulating in the academic sphere and offers a suggestion for an analytical framework, outlining the overarching directions of green policies and situating the welfare state literature within this context.Footnote 1

In general, two overarching paradigms within the green transition have been identified: modernisation and transformation (Adloff and Neckel 2019).Footnote 2 Under the latter approach, Adloff and Neckel (2019) subsume Degrowth or Postgrowth, whereas under the former they include what is known as Eco-Modernism or Green Growth. These paradigms differ in their problem definition of climate change, their conception of the human-nature relationship, and their ideas of solutions. All of these future scenarios contain distinct notions of well-being, redistribution, and the role of social policy and welfare-state institutions, alongside which social and climate policies are integrated. In principle, eco-social policies could roughly span the following aspects: (I) reactive policies, cushioning the distributive consequences of climate policies and mitigating the impacts of climate change, (II) the productive interaction with the transformation through forward-looking structural policies such as retraining, and (III) a greening and decarbonisation of welfare-state activities and institutions (Bohnenberger 2022; Mandelli 2022; Siderius 2023). In the following section, I discuss which of these aspects are integrated into the paradigms.

2.1 Ecological modernisation

As the term suggests, modernist approaches are rooted in modernisation thought, guiding policymaking and economic development in the 20th and 21st centuries. It follows the narrative of humanity being at its developmental peak, with progress and technological and industrial development as essential, ever-increasing patterns (Adloff and Neckel 2019). There is a clear distinction between humans and nature, based on enlightenment thought, which frames nature as something dangerous to be dominated and controlled by supreme human rationality. Nature thus becomes a controlled entity, providing humanity with resources that are relevant to development (K.-W. Brand 2017; U. Brand and Wissen 2017).

Accordingly, economic growth does not stand in conflict with climate protection. On the contrary, the two can go hand in hand to solve the latter. Well-being can remain constant and even continue to increase depending on the ability of technology and innovation to develop the necessary tools to increase the efficiency of existing technologies and make alternative technologies for carbon storage and carbon-free energy production (Newell and Paterson 2010). There are currently two approaches within Green Growth scenarios that are fighting for dominance in policymaking. They represent—to a certain extent—a continuation of debates within economic thought of the 20th century and the question of how much state intervention in the market is desirable (Hylland and Zeckhauser 1979; Rausch and Karplus 2014). Both approaches include the promise of a continued increase in material wealth for everyone, and both imply a certain transformation within institutions but no radical transformation in regard to governance or economic system (Schulze Waltrup 2023).

The so-called Green Economy approach is based on a neoclassical understanding and environmental economics (Schulze Waltrup 2023). It regards state intervention as undesirable and believes that efficient markets will create the most effective and efficient policy outcomes. Climate change is understood as a market externality that can be solved by pricing it in. The preferred climate policy instruments in this approach are carbon pricing, either through a quantity-based instrument such as the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) or price-based instruments such as carbon taxes, which are deemed politically less feasible (Harrison 2015). Governmental intervention is thus allowed only for the limited extent of creating a favourable environment in which markets can function (Tienhaara 2018).

Within neoclassical economist theory, the welfare state is either neglected or allowed only a minimal role (Solo 1975). Accordingly, the social aspect in Green Economy is discussed through the lens of the distributional effect that climate mitigation policies such as carbon trading possess (Büchs et al. 2011). Thus, SP is understood narrowly only in its reactive function, cushioning the effects of climate change, or climate policy, through recompensation without any preventive SP measures (Mandelli 2022). Environmental and welfare economists suggest to “revenue recycl[e] through lump-sum dividends” (Mildenberger et al. 2022, p. 141), namely that policymakers earmark the revenues from carbon trading schemes and redistribute these as cash transfers. The primary goal in this stream of thought is to increase the public support for and acceptance of climate mitigation policies through redistributive measures. Such studies argue that lump-sum payments—where the same amount of money is paid out to every household—are more favourable than other designs that either directly target poorer households (Sommer et al. 2022) or address horizonal inequality (Edenhofer et al. 2021). Social cash transfers have been criticised in the development literature for reducing the manifold challenges that social policy and welfare states face to an apolitical “one-size-fits-all” solution that fails to address local specificities (Béland et al. 2018). Furthermore, they have often been found to be implemented in somewhat top-down approaches, thereby circumventing foundational questions of state-citizen relationships and the democratic negotiation of (re)distribution (Ouma and Adésínà 2019; Kuss and Gerstenberg 2023).

In contrast to the Green Economy approach, in Green Keynesianism, climate change is understood as a systemic problem, whereby the use and consumption of fossil fuel-based products is embedded into societal practices and production, which require wholesale transformation (Rosenbloom et al. 2020). The actor to facilitate this structural transformation is the state, which can assume an entrepreneurial role, steering change through regulative elements and instruments (Schulze Waltrup 2023), such as subsidies, phase-outs, infrastructural policy and investments in research and technology is required (Patt and Lilliestam 2018; Cullenward and Victor 2020).

Accordingly, social policy interventions that are aligned with Green Keynesianism are protective as they exceed the level of pure financial redistribution. They can be understood as being much more integrated and as spanning several sectors (e.g., reskilling in labour market policy, subsidising and expanding public transport, or subsidising the renovation of houses; see Mandelli 2022). Within this line of thought, welfare states have historically been a function of the capitalist economy, replacing the social security systems of family and church in the wake of industrialisation (Briggs 1961, Zimmermann 2024). In this functionalist relationship between state and citizens, they take up a productive role—providing the economy with workers who fulfil all health and educational requirements to work in the economy. From this perspective, inequality cannot exceed a certain level if public upheaval is to be avoided (Offe 1972). In line with this thinking is the “just transition” paradigm that emerged during the 1980s in the United States among workers in the fossil-intensive industries, demanding that the transition is made in their interest, and thereby cushioning the social trade-offs of the transition (Newell and Mulvaney 2013).

2.2 Transformation

Transformative approaches are rooted in post-Anthropocene, decolonial, and post-development thought (Fremaux and Barry 2019; Weart 2011). Degrowth scholars argue that the climate crisis is caused by an extractivist and exploitative ever-expanding and accumulating capitalist system (Adloff and Neckel 2019). There is a multitude of different approaches within the Degrowth sphere, they share the pledge to reconsider the relationship between humans and nature (K.-W. Brand 2017) and to change modernist notions of well-being.Footnote 3 In the following, two exemplary approaches within the Degrowth sphere shall be introduced: sustainable welfare and climate justice.Footnote 4

Both approaches have in common a critical stance towards the social dimension in Green Growth approaches: they criticise firstly the growth dependency of the welfare state and secondly the nation-state focus of redistribution. Thus, these concepts share the ambition to develop integrated and preventative approaches that combine ecological and social considerations. They criticize the welfare state’s dependence on economic growth for funding and green modernists strict focus on labour (Cahill and Fitzpatrick 2002). Instead, welfare states should be “seen as embedded in ecosystems and in need of respecting the regeneration capacity of the biosphere” (Hirvilammi and Koch 2020, p. 2). Furthermore, their idea of justice and redistribution entails the consideration of historic debt of carbon emissions and global redistribution. According to these approaches, redistribution within welfare states is exclusionary, as it retains the welfare within nation-state boundaries and, thus, further perpetuates global centre-periphery inequalities (Offe 1972). It argues that redistribution must be extended beyond nation-state borders (Brandstedt and Emmelin 2016): “Even if the world’s islands of prosperity, insulated from global misery, were to accept the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a guideline for social policy intervention: Unless they transcend the limited perspective of national welfare states, their transformative efforts will ultimately be doomed to failure” (Lessenich and Barth 2022, p. 313).

The two concepts can be distinguished by their imagined scope of transformation of the political and economic system. Furthermore, they argue from different perspectives: while sustainable welfare distinctively focuses on the Global North, climate justice speaks from the perspective of the Global South. The concept of sustainable welfare suggests that the reformation of existing institutions is possible (Büchs and Koch 2017; Gough 2022). This includes, for example, limiting consumption to so-called consumption corridors (Huwe and Frick 2022) and defining planetary boundaries to the economy (Raworth 2017). Furthermore, claims of recomposing consumption, especially that of the richest 10% of the world’s population, through taxation and regulatory instruments are popular (Schulze Waltrup 2023)—or, as Theine and Taschwer (2021, p. 119) put it: “Why we cannot afford the rich anymore”. Further instrument proposals from this literature include reducing working hours, ensuring universal basic services and income, promoting a care-economy, and so on (Parrique et al. 2023), all of which could be implemented within existing economic paradigms. While acknowledging the radical institutional changes that these ideas imply (Hickel et al. 2022; Hirvilammi and Koch 2020), they can both “either reinforce Green Growth or indicate a transition towards Degrowth” (Schulze Waltrup 2023, p. 9). The transformative potential of these approaches will depend on how much they will be softened and co-opted over time and through adoption in real-world policymaking. Furthermore, some sustainable welfare scholars counterintuitively maintain narratives from the modernisation paradigm of well-being, stating that “this does not mean that ‘development’ will cease; industrialised societies will still be able to increase well-being: the moral, social, cultural, and material position of their citizens” (Gough and Meadowcroft 2011, p. 6), probably in an attempt to make the concept popular or conceivable for policymakers.

In contrast, climate justice movements and literature (Agyeman 2014), and approaches with a decolonial, intersectional, post-Anthropocene background suggest more revolutionary changes to the economic system and democratic institutions that are aimed towards communal modes of living inspired by indigenous examples (Kallis et al. 2022; Zuanic 2023). Such approaches posit that climate protection can succeed only by redefining well-being and changing the extractivist consumption lifestyle in the Global North towards notions of sufficiency (Stengel 2011). They emphasise the global scope of climate change by highlighting the injustices between the Global North and Global South in terms of accepting responsibility for climate change and bearing the burden—while the Global North bears the historical responsibility for climate change, the Global South is most adversely affected by it (Backhouse and Tittor 2019). Furthermore, they emphasise the reproduction of neo-colonial structures through Green Growth policies, exploiting nature and people in the periphery, creating unequal access to resources and green energy and destroying indigenous living spaces through carbon offsetting (Sultana 2022). Generally, these movements are characterised more by ideas and broad visions than by concrete policy proposals (Hankammer et al. 2023).

Table 1 summarises the different narratives and ideas that are currently present in the academic literature. The remainder of the article will outline the extent to which these have found their way into the policymaking arena and how policymakers in Germany and the EU perceive the social dimension within the green transformation. This represents first insights into a rapidly develo** policy field. It is important to study the matter, because policymakers’ core beliefs on matters such as redistribution and state-citizen relationships influence how they design policies (Sabatier 1988; Linder and Peters 1989; Weible 2018). Ultimately, the design of flanking social policy instruments will have a significant influence on the legitimation and success of ambitious climate policy within the cases’ electorates.

Table 1 Conceptualisation of the Social Dimension within Different Green Transformation Scenarios
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3 Method and design

The analysis in this study is based on 41 semi-structured interviews with EU and German policymakers, conducted within two research projects “The social dimension of the European Green Deal” and “Perceptions of Climate Policy Instruments”.Footnote 5 The questionnaires in both projects were similarly designed, purposefully including similar questions to create synergies. In the interviews, questions were asked about the policymakers’ perceptions of the green transition, what they wanted to achieve with their own work in the field and how they wanted to achieve it. Furthermore, their conception of “justice” within a just transition as well as the role that social policy could or should play within that transition were interrogated. The interviewees were part of either the environmental or social committees of the European and German Parliament (14 interviews) and the ministries and directorate generals for social and climate policy in the European Commission and German bureaucracy (10 interviews). Furthermore, as interest representations, interviews were conducted with environmental organisations (five interviews) and industry representatives in the climate field (four interviews) and with welfare organisations and trade unions in the social policy field (eight interviews). Interview partners were selected following in-depth research and snowball sampling based on recommendations from interviewed persons. Interviews were conducted between April 2022 and April 2023, which was a politically significant time with the rise of inflation, the post-Covid-19 recession, the Ukraine war, and rising energy prices, which informed the content of the interviews. Most interviews were conducted through video calls, while the rest were conducted in person, and all interviews had an average duration of one hour. After receiving written consent from interviewees, the interviews were recorded, transcribed, and anonymised. The interviews were conducted in both German and English, and quotations from the German interviews were translated into English for the findings section.

The EU and Germany were chosen as case studies because they simultaneously developed ambitious climate policies and strong debates about the social dimension, but came to different policy outcomes. They illustrate the role of different institutional, historic, and cultural contexts leading to different policy outcomes and interactions between these outcomes in a context of multilevel governance. The EU’s Green Deal represents a Green Economy approach to climate policy, with carbon trading as its cornerstone (Ossewaarde and Ossewaarde-Lowtoo 2020), which has manifest distributive consequences for European citizens (Schumacher et al. 2022). These distributive consequences are met with social policies that are somewhat reactive and investment-based in terms of funding, such as the Social Climate Fund and the Just Transition Mechanism (Mandelli et al. 2023). Germany, in contrast, has a more regulative tradition and is categorised as a welfare regime with high welfare-state intervention (Zimmermann and Graziano 2020). Climate policy measures are equally state-interventionist (e.g. state subsidies for renewable energies or a mandatory coal phase-out). The coal phase-out included structural policy funding (e.g. reskilling of workers), which interacts with the Just Transition Mechanism. The most prominent eco-social instrument currently under discussion is the “Klimageld” (climate money), an unconditional cash transfer, the targeting and size of which were debated at the time of the interviews (Örtl 2022; Sommer et al. 2022). Beyond that, eco-social concerns are being mainstreamed into other policy fields such as energy, construction, and transport.

The analytical strategy was based on an epistemic approach of constructivism, or, more concretely, the constructivist public policy theory of discursive institutionalism (DI) (Hay 2011; Schmidt 2008, 2010). DI emphasises the power of ideas within the policymaking process. Policy change in the eyes of DI scholars is effected through the ability of actors to frame and promote certain ideas and strategically build ideational coalitions (Saurugger 2013). The data analysis consisted of qualitative content analysis and interpretive analysis. Qualitative content analysis (Mayring 2021) allows one to draw patterns from the data that can later be interpreted. The data were coded in a two-step procedure: first, general patterns were deductively generated from the theoretical framework and research question, and second, different perspectives were inductively detected within these categories. Based on this, a coding scheme was developed and tested, after which all interviews were recoded based on the final coding scheme. The interpretive analysis of the coded interviews was based on critical discourse analysis, which allows to identify power dynamics within discourses, to outline which discourses dominate and which perspectives are consequently neglected (Van Dijk 1993).

4 Findings

Policymakers in Germany and the EU have slowly started integrating the social dimension into climate policymaking. The following section will discuss in which way they have done so, which ideas are dominant, and which ideas are consequently neglected. This will be done alongside the aforementioned concepts: the visions of transition of the different actors and how the social aspects within it are framed—concerns of inequality, justice, and justifications for SP. It finds that, overarchingly, the conception of Green Economy is the most dominant narrative on the European level and also highly acclaimed by liberals in Germany.Footnote 6 For the other actors in Germany, Green Keynesianism is more prominent, with increasing knowledge around more integrated approaches that involve regulative instruments in structural policy sectors. Questions on how the welfare state itself could decarbonise or become less growth-dependent are present to only a limited extent in those debates. This is visualized in Fig. 1. Most policymakers spoke in closed frames without contradicting themselves much.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Paradigmatic Position by Case and Actor Group. a EU, b Germany. Source: Created by the author. The figure displays the code-cooccurrences (meaning the appearance per document) of the three overarching paradigms of Degrowth, Green Keynesianism and Green Economy by the actor group. As the data is not a representative sample in a quantitative sense, this quantification is not representative for a statistical population. For the EU, the party cases of Liberals and Left party remain empty because to interviews for these cases could be conducted

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4.1 The social dimension within the Green Economy and Green Keynesianism

Green Economy

Within the interviews, especially among the EU policymakers in the European Commission, as well as liberal actors and think tanks, the Green Economy perspective was dominant. The interviewees in favour of this perspective of transformation emphasised the necessity and possibility of solving climate change with carbon pricing and technical innovation. In addition to “the primary objective … the reduction in CO2-emissions” (Interview 30, Liberal, 2022), the main objectives of the transformation are “social acceptability … maintaining jobs and a competitive economy” (Interview 41, European Commission, 2023). From this perspective, social welfare is produced through economic growth and full employment.

Thus, the role of SP within this context is the “sociopolitical compensation for climate protection measures to secure acceptance” (Interview 11, Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, 2023). To meet this goal, Green Economy advocates suggest accompanying climate mitigation policy, namely carbon pricing, by recycling the revenues from it: “That’s a really important advantage of carbon pricing [that it generates revenues] and those revenues can then be used, to invest in the green transition, but also to address social impacts of all climate policies” (Interview 39, European Commission, 2023). Interestingly, throughout the whole range of actors and ideological positions, the interviewees were strongly in favour of these cash transfers, the “Klimageld” (climate money) in Germany and the EU funding policies (e.g., the Social Climate Fund and the Just Transition Fund), disagreeing only slightly on their concrete design. Within the European Commission, the primary focus of the interviewees was to “mainstream and address these challenges [of climate change and SP] together within the various funds” (Interview 15, 2023).

Indeed, the main justification for SP within this paradigm was acceptability: “Well, it’s important because of the acceptance and that people are taken along. And the fact that the costs incurred and climate protection are usually not free of charge, and for these losses for these higher costs, I can and must compensate them politically” (Interview 30, Liberal, 2022). Accordingly, the justification for certain measures was not necessarily social justice or fighting poverty but rather an appeasement mechanism in the sense of ‘bread and games for the people’—as long as the populations’ initial needs are satisfied, they will not rebel.

While these actors repeated the goals of a “fair” and “just” transition where people needed to be “taken along”, they were criticised by other actors for using these expressions as empty catchphrases: “The fact that the transition has to be just is always recognised in speeches, it’s always written that nobody should be left behind, that transition will have to be just and fair … Though, there’s a discrepancy there between the declared intention [and how] climate policies and social policies are done” (Interview 5, Trade Union, 2022). Yet, the terms “fair” and “just” are anything but clear and uncontested in the European policy discourse, and different actors assign different meanings to them. Thus, what can be observed here, as Gengnagel and Zimmermann (2022) state, is a “discursive domestication” of just transition narratives by politically opposed actors.

Green Keynesianism

In contrast to the Green Economy approach, Green Keynesian perspectives were highly sceptical of the idea that emissions trading alone would suffice to drive the transformation: “Climate policy entails a deep transformation in certain industries and I would argue that it is always important to flank that with structural policy form the state. Strict market liberals might see that differently. However, in my view, we will be better off if we try to cushion such ruptures as the state” (Interview 8, Trade Union, 2023). In addition, the goal was defined differently among those actors but included some sort of justice perception: “‘Zero emissions’ is no quality statement about a society. You can of course live in a CO2 neutral society in 2045, having reached all the climate goals, without life having become more lifeworthy in the slightest” (Interview 11, Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, 2023). Rather than carbon pricing, they pledged regulation: “No bus is driving more often because the CO2-price is rising. This only happens if I properly finance public transport and invest in structural reforms and if I take care of the redistribution question” (Interview 8, Trade Union, 2023). These standpoints were mostly propagated by the trade unions, social democrats, and left-leaning politicians.

Those Green Keynesians displayed a more justice-driven perspective of social policy and a more integrated vision of measures accompanying climate policies. Their envisioned SP measures for supporting the transformation were more in the mould of preventative rather than reactive policy: “I think it is important to look at things proactively instead of making emergency care afterwards … The best social policy is the social policy that can be prevented through an intelligent and forward-looking labour policy” (Interview 8, Trade Union, 2023). They pledge “active structural [and labour] policy” (Interview 10, Social Democrat, 2023). This could be reached, as they argued, through a more integrated policymaking approach: “Climate policy should always be designed while having the social question in mind: … which distributional effects this measure might have and if there is another measure with less or no distributional effects that might have the same climate effect?” (Interview 3, Ministry for Labour and Social Policy, 2022). In addition to protecting people in high carbon industries from the effects of the transition, the focus was also placed on workers’ rights in emerging industries such as renewable energies: “There we have principally a situation like in early capitalism, where a working relationship is slowly developed that is in accordance with workers’ rights, with welfare state policy, with workers’ rights to strike, tariff payments and so on and so forth” (Interview 8, Trade Union, 2023). They also welcomed the Klimageld; however, they did so because of its redistributive potential.

In addition to acceptance, poverty reduction is a main goal for Green Keynesians: “I would even say that acceptance is a secondary goal here, that primarily we have a real social political responsibility here. The increase in the energy prices last winter has shown that in the transition we really have to make sure we fight poverty” (Interview 11, Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, 2023). Moreover, the interviewees highlighted the necessity of enabling real participation: “The ‘just’ in Just Transition is not necessarily an economic one, rather I think it in a sense of enabling participation” (Interview 11, Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, 2023). This real participation was to be enabled through two pillars. On the one hand, there is an emphasis on increasing democratic fora and citizen participation in the social dialogue, “there is a lot of things that can be done but I’m quite sure that the question is more about bringing people in the deliberation and in the decision to know collectively where we want to go” (Interview 5, Trade Union, 2022). On the other hand, enabling households to adapt financially is promoted: “social acceptability means more than just some financial cushioning… we need to enable the people to adapt accordingly” (Interview 7, Think Tank, 2022).

Labour unions and social democrats find themselves in a conflicting role concerning the just transition. For one thing, trade unions have been the main channel for the just transition claims of workers’ fights since the beginning. However, they often find themselves defending fossil-fuel-intensive industries, as this Member of the European Parliament (MEP) pointed out:

“Last year … the parliamentary consultations on the new ETS … had great significance for… the steel industry in Germany. The question was: which benchmarks should apply?… And here, together with IG Metall, with workers councils from the steel industry, I mobilised properly: we made sure that the social democratic members of parliament… were put under pressure. And in the end… in this very specific vote when it came to the benchmarks, contrary to previous figures, a majority of the S&D MEPs fell over here.” (Interview 13, Social Democrat, 2023)

Thus, they are serving discourses of climate delay (Busch et al. 2023; Lamb et al. 2020) and being perceived as hindering climate policy: “We are understood as being very defensive as unions” (Interview 9, Trade Union, 2023). Actors from the climate policy sphere expressed frustration about this industry-friendly focus: “[We need to make] sure that industry is also playing their role. They have been receiving free money for more than 10 years [through free allocation of certificates], they could also play a role in making sure that the energy transition and so on is not only being paid by the most vulnerable population” (Interview 27, Think Tank, 2022).

4.2 Blind spots from a degrowth perspective

Degrowth perspectives were quite rare in the interviews. There is a clear distinction between policymakers in parliaments and ministries and those from interest representations: The policymakers within real policymaking capacities had less awareness of problems and less progressive views, with the exception of a few green and leftist members of parliament (MPs) and MEPs. The majority opinion deemed talks on sufficiency unpopular and politically unfeasible, as one interview partner from a German ministry put it:

“I personally think that these problems cannot be solved successfully if we don’t manage to connect climate protection with well-being, convenience and things like that… so if you want to lose political majorities, then of course, you can stand up for things like sufficiency (laughs). But I don’t think that you’ll serve the matter with that. If you turn the wheel to far then with the next election, you’ll have people voted into majorities that do not make climate policy AT ALL.” (Interview 11, Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, 2023)

However, some interview partners were vocal about Degrowth and critical about the Green Growth strategy of the EU; for example, one leftist MP stated: “If we do not succeed in putting nature, the environment, biodiversity, climate protection and social aspects above the rights of investors in the EU and worldwide, then we have no chance. Point. Then we will lose, sooner or later … Greening the industry buys us time. But on a finite planet Earth, infinite growth is not possible. ” (Interview 22, The Left, 2022). One interview partner stated that Degrowth was inevitable because: “We know for sure that if climate change continues like it does at the moment, we will have losses in economic growth anyways” (Interview 2, Ministry for Labour and Social Policy, 2022).

Sustainable welfare: decarbonising the welfare state

Attempts to bring the ecological into the social and decarbonise the welfare state are very much in their infancy. Not much knowledge has yet spilled over from the academic literature, especially the points from sustainable welfare scholars on growth dependency of welfare state finance were neither mentioned nor known if asked. Specifically, progressive instruments such as universal basic income or universal basic services were not mentioned at all. In Germany, some processes of reflection have started about the investment of pension funds and the ecological footstep of state-provided welfare institutions:

“At the moment, social security doesn’t have to fulfil sustainability criteria and that is a problem. We started that process in the social democratic party and I will be part of defining what sustainability in welfare state activity actually means… I want, that everywhere, where the welfare state is involved, let it be in pension funds or constructing safehouses for women, does these things under the consideration of climate measures—that not the cheapest is the best option anymore but sustainable… we as a state have to be role models for the industry: we have to showcase how to invest sustainably.” (Interview 10, Social Democrat, 2023)

Furthermore, some institutions are working towards making the institution itself more sustainable owing to the engagement of a few agents of change, for example one employee from the German Ministry for Labour and Social Policy stated: “We ensured that there are vegetarian options in the ministries’ canteen” (Interview 3, Ministry for Labour and Social Policy, 2022).

Sufficiency: recomposing consumption

Very few interviewees mentioned sufficiency, and, if they did, it was only as an unrealistic idea. One interviewee from the Green Party stated: “If we are free styling here, then of course… (laughs) you’d have to reduce the level of affluence that people in the Northern hemisphere have” (Interview 34, Green Party, 2022). One ministerial official stated, “We need a change of consciousness on the individual level. People need to understand that they cannot continue to live like we did before. We need to get away from that ‘always more and more’ attitude” (Interview 3, Ministry for Labour and Social Policy, 2022), urging for greater inclusion of sustainability in education systems and raising awareness among the younger generations. Another interviewee raised awareness of the fact that, in addition to past events, the design of current trade policies is further perpetuating the climate crisis, as resources for the green transition are mined under poor working and environmental conditions and subsequently imported to the Global North instead of leaving them to the Global South to facilitate their transition: “[W]e really have to make sure that we finally make sufficiency work, meaning that we stop consuming so much in order to have to import less” (Interview 6, Welfare Organization, 2022), he stated.

Most of these claims were combined with a notion of radical redistribution and the richest 1% in society taking responsibility: “I think if the social perspective has to be considered, it’s a lot more important to look at redistribution … the rich part of the society, which has a higher carbon footprint. This part of society can, and I think should at least bear a reasonable responsibility for the pollution and the environmental damage they cause in the longer run …. I mean, this sounds a bit slogan-esque but: tax the rich and then redistribute it” (Interview 26, Environmental Organization, 2022). However, as a Social Democrat interviewee pointed out: “The societal discourse for this is missing completely unfortunately” (Interview 10, Social Democrat, 2023).

Climate justice

Any notions of “justice” expressed in the interviews were predominantly centred around the Global North. The “just” in just transition refers to justice for European citizens, an electorate in European countries, European low-income households, and white male workers employed in unionised industries. One trade unionist stated, “The transition will not succeed if it’s about saying to people that their living conditions will be worse than today” (Interview 5, Trade Union, 2022). When asked about which role justice towards the Global South played in their work, one German ministry official responded: “absolutely none. We make national policies” (Interview 11, Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, 2023). Ambiguities between different regions are, if at all, perceived between the European east and west, and some interviewees claimed the need for solidarity between them.

Only a few interviewees exhibited a more global understanding of justice and redistribution, as for example, this Green Party interviewee: “I come to it from perspective of climate justice, which has as a basis that you can only do real, progressive climate legislation in a just way … you’d have to reduce the level of affluence and equity that people in the Northern hemisphere have and funnel lots of that money into the Global South” (Interview 34, Green Party, 2022). Those who were in favour of climate justice mentioned the historic debt of emissions in the Global North and the higher affectedness of climate change in the Global South: “We have a historic responsibility as industrial countries. That can’t be discussed away … the countries in the Global South are affected most by the adverse effects of climate policy, while it is them who basically live climate neutral” (Interview 8, Trade Union, 2023). Furthermore, there was an understanding of the problem of the exploitative structures of the European green transition:

“In my honest opinion, we are not doing enough for this … if one were completely honest we would simply need recompensation measures towards the Global South … It is a massive problem how resources for our green transition are being exploited in Africa by our partners.” (Interview 10, Social Democrat, 2023)

However, this interviewee expressed rather incoherent views throughout the interview, seamlessly switching between statements such as these to more green-economy narratives. He repeatedly emphasised the importance of investment in electric cars, which happens to be a significant part of industry in his electoral area. Thus, such statements in the interviews seem to reflect high morals that are not followed by any concrete action.

5 Conclusion

Climate policy (in)action, in whichever form, has material redistributive consequences. This article has analysed the ideas of EU and German policymakers on the social dimension within the green transition. Overarchingly, the matter is slowly being adopted into the institutional architecture of the responsible institutions, but an integrated approach of eco-social thinking has not been fully established. Knowledge around integrated approaches of eco-social policies and progressive measures have not yet fully spilled over to the relevant institutions.

The findings suggest that the most dominant paradigm at the EU level, is the Green Economy approach, which views climate policy as a narrow task focused on CO2 emissions as a market externality that can be priced in by market-based mitigation policies. The role of SP within this approach is understood in an equally narrow manner, buying the population’s acceptance of climate policies through recompensation and reactive measures. In contrast, Green Keynesian approaches advocate for integrated and progressive social policies that span multiple policy fields such as energy policy, construction, and transport, as well as progressive labour policies. However, both approaches remain within the boundaries of Green Growth, whereby the well-being of society is generally believed to come directly from the well-being of industry. The article indicates an absence around Degrowth discourses. Only very few actors have acknowledged Degrowth, highlighting the need to reconsider well-being, consumption, and societal living standards, and thus expressing the need for radical redistribution. However, these actors believe that these can remain only ideas in an institutional and discursive context of narratives beyond Green Growth and are thus politically unrealistic. Ideas of justice and redistribution remain focused on the Global North. Some ideas of climate justice and international redistribution are present but they are not voiced by actors with decision-making power.

All of these green transformation approaches have inherent ideas about the justification, scope, and instrumentation of SP. What lies at the heart of these and was a golden thread throughout all interviews are different understandings of socio-political order, namely, the kind of relationship the state and its population should have. This is fundamental to the role and scope of social policy. Climate policy has long been dominated by a technocratic understanding and technological neutrality (Azar and Sandén 2011; Paterson et al. 2022). Among all interviewees, there is a certain awareness that this is no longer the way to go: “If we force something onto people, we need their support for that. And this society policy element is missing everywhere” (Interview 10, Social Democrat, 2023).

The idea of people needing to be “taken along” within transformation, and that legitimacy for climate policy can be achieved through SP, leads to different conclusions of which two narratives were most prominent: ‘bread and games for the people’ versus ‘true participation’. Green economists used the former narrative, justifying social policy mostly with arguments around acceptance. Owing to fears of social unrest (e.g., the yellow vests protest movement in France), there is a certain recognition, even among market liberals, that some sort of recompensation is necessary. This argument was often made under the umbrella of “social peace so that your society sticks together, that it doesn’t break apart” (Interview 19, Thinktank, 2022). However, these solely recompensating measures (e.g. cash transfers) are caught in contradiction—while they are sold as attempts to take the people along, they aim to buy social peace by silencing the democratic deliberation surrounding the transition. In contrast, civil society organisations, leftist politicians, and trade unions argued for ‘true participation’ (Sabato et al. 2023), where people need to be enabled to participate in a democratic deliberation around the transition:

“I find democratic processes very important in that context: to organise transformation processes in a way that people can participate. So, to involve the people in decision making processes, let it be in paid labour or through citizen participation. That can be done financially, but that also needs to be done ideationally. People need to be involved in planning processes and need to be able to voice their criticism before it is implemented and too late. That is very important in my opinion.” (Interview 8, Trade Union, 2023)

This represents an interest-based understanding of the role of the welfare state—namely as a negotiator that must find the balance between different classes—as it can “[mitigate and legitimize] unequal affectedness of transition processes” (Zimmermann 2024, p. 64). The interest-based approach to the welfare state, which negotiates and balances different interests within society, is better suited to meet the deeply political nature of climate policy and play a critical role in democratic deliberation around the essential question of redistribution (Nonhoff 2008). These considerations of social legitimacy lead into the realm of democracy theory, which is beyond the scope of this article but pose fruitful ground for future research.