Non‐State Actor Reactions to the European Green Deal: Implications for Eco‐Social Integration

ABSTRACT In response to the interconnected ecological and social crises, there is growing interest in the integration of climate and social policy, both in academic discourse and in public debate. While the European Union has begun to address both dimensions jointly through the European Green Deal (EGD), it remains institutionally separate at the national level. Non‐state actors on both levels are increasingly engaged in debates about the social consequences of climate change and related policies. Drawing on field theory , this article conceptualizes the EGD as a field intervention and examines how national‐level actors respond to it—specifically, whether these responses signal an emerging field change . Using Germany as a case study, the article analyzes a dataset of public communications by non‐state actors in the eco‐social nexus at both the EU and the national level. A mixed‐methods approach combines computer‐assisted quantitative text analysis tools such as Structural Topic Modeling and Sentiment Analysis with selective qualitative document analysis. The findings reveal three distinct actor types and their respective strategies: (1) less‐equipped challengers, who largely ignore the EGD; (2) well‐equipped challengers, who engage with it to advance eco‐social demands; and (3) incumbents, who either frame the EGD positively to promote investments in their respective industry or explicitly oppose its objectives. Given the dominance of incumbents' strategies in the debate, combined with their structural advantages, the article concludes that the EGD is unlikely to trigger substantial field change toward national eco‐social integration—yet it offers critical discursive opportunities for challengers.