Innovative policies for industrial transition in the European Union: mitigating the social impacts?

Abstract

The resurgence of industrial policies in the European Union has led to the introduction of policies to support regions in industrial transition within the framework of territorial cohesion policies. There is an initial interest in introducing a social component in these policies. This brief investigation reviews the actions carried out to date and reflects on their implementation. The European Commission has launched several regional policy pilots, which could help in the definition of new industrial transition policies, but these policies require to progress in their practical implementation, in order to obtain the expected results, thus mitigating the social impacts that the transition may cause in the regions of Europe. From the analysis of the pilots and the state of the art, we propose some recommendations to operationalize these policies, based mainly in an appropriate policy mix, consideration of the spatial components, involvement of the stakeholders and the use of bottom-up and neo-endogenous approaches.

Keywords:

• industrial policy
• industrial transition
• territorial cohesion
• cohesion policy
• European Union
• regional policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1593086905382&uri=CELEX:52020DC0102.

2 A policy pilot is ‘a small-scale project to measure or observe the specific impacts or mechanism of policy implemented under the well-designed plan. It is designed in advance to a full-scale policy implementation facing the high level of uncertainty’ (Lee, Jung, and Lee 2009).