From the Green to the Just Transition: The Emergence of the Compensatory State in the EU's Approach to Climate Change

Abstract In this paper, we investigate the adaptation of the EU climate stances between the early 2000s until today. Historically tracing the EU's approach to the green transition, we highlight an increasing role of interventionist frames within European discourses and policies. As the realms of intervention have increased, so has the EU's emphasis on the need to provide social protection for the sections of the population that have more to lose from a large‐scale transition. We understand this process as signalling the increasing relevance of what we call the Compensatory State. This concept points to a form of governance that, by setting itself ambitious goals that (if implemented) would have widespread effects on large portions of the population, needs to produce equally extended forms of compensations. The paper historically traces the development of this form of governance from the previously prevalent frameworks (which we understand through the concepts of the Regulatory State and the Competitiveness‐enhancing State). The paper integrates contemporary attempts to theorise the role of public authorities within the EU's green transition. In addition, our analysis challenges the expectations of the extant literature in political economy, which looks at increasing social protection mainly as a public solution to market distortions.