HORIZON EUROPE FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME┋Tackling inequalities in the green and digital transitions

Expected Outcome

Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Policymakers at EU/national/local level are provided with a comprehensive view of the risks of widening existing inequalities or create new ones as a result of the twin transition.
• Policymakers at EU/national/local level are provided with policy options that could address existing inequalities and mitigate potential negative socio-economic effects of the twin transitions.

Scope

The next decades will be defined by the twin green and digital transitions. The twin transitions have be just and socially fair. To achieve this, policymakers need to both recognise existing inequalities and vulnerabilities and take duly into account the possible distributional impacts of new/revised policies (e.g. the Green Deal and its Fit for 55 Package), against (updated) baseline scenarios. While some aspects of the transitions are subject to (distributional) impact assessment and have been scrutinised by policymakers and relevant stakeholders, the twin transitions might fail to address or, worse, widen existing inequalities and/or create new ones. For this reason, research under this action should:

• Extensively investigate areas where the twin transitions – separately and jointly – and their driving policies aggravate existing inequalities and vulnerabilities and/or risk increasing inequalities, including dedicated explorations where the effects of the two transitions (and potentially implemented policies) mutually reinforce or mitigate each other.
• Put dedicated focus on gender, the age distribution (incl. old age and in particular also young people and their specific challenges), spatial aspects (incl. rural areas and degree of urbanisation), education and skill proficiencies (incl. individuals who are not in education, employment, or training (NEET)), migration backgrounds, income, labour.
• Market dimensions (incl. labour market attachment and sectoral affiliation of individuals), and other key-covariates of (financial as well as skill) vulnerabilities.
• Identify mitigation measures to counter such inequalities, including the underlying time frames and (temporal as well as spatial) order of implementation.
• Inform policymaking of the research findings with the double objective of i) reducing ex-ante the possibly negative socio-economic/distributional effects of green and digital policies and ii) promoting corrective policies/action aimed at reducing existing inequalities.

The proposals may be a forward-looking exercise, possibly making use of scenario building.

In as far as possible, research may also lay out the dedicated factors driving inequalities, and possibly explore them in more detail. This may include factors such as, but not limited to:

• The role of the financial sector e.g. via green financing and the fintech-sector.
• Digital language equity and the general (English) language proficiency.

Clustering and cooperation with other selected projects under this call and other relevant projects are strongly encouraged.