Depoliticizing the Just Transition? A Discursive Analysis of EU Parliamentary Debates on the Just Transition Mechanism

Abstract

This article examines the discursive dynamics of depoliticization in the European Union’s ecological transition, focusing on the Just Transition Mechanism (JTM), a key instrument of the European Green Deal. Building on critical scholarship, we start from the observation that EU governance often frames environmental challenges as neutral and technical, obscuring their political nature and narrowing the space for alternatives. To assess how such processes unfold, we conducted a thematic analysis of plenary debates in the European Parliament and official Commission statements concerning the JTM. Using a coding framework centered on conflict, authority, agency, and alternative futures, the analysis shows that parliamentary discourse largely reduces contestation to issues of financial allocation, technical feasibility, and procedural compliance. EU institutions emerge as the main agents and sources of authority, depicted as leading and safeguarding the transition, while regions and local actors appear in adaptive and dependent roles. Although references to social justice and generational responsibility occasionally surface, transformative visions challenging growth-oriented or technocratic paradigms remain absent. Nonetheless, traces of politicization suggest latent openings for contestation, highlighting the need for future research on whether bottom-up actors (unions, municipalities, grassroots movements) can re-politicize the field of transition.

1. Introduction

Recent literature on the European Union (EU) policies on ecological transition converges on the idea that certain EU actors, and particularly the Commission, have pursued a depoliticized path in setting the agenda (Haverland et al. 2016; Vlasiuk Nibe et al. 2024), especially on issues within their competence or deemed divisive. As Machin (2019) argues, depoliticization operates on two levels: it concerns both the content of policies and the debates around them. From this perspective, EU governance is often accused of constructing ecological transition as neutral and inevitable (the “TINA” logic: There Is No Alternative), while masking specific interests through a managerial approach (Clarke and Newman 1997; Joerges and Weimer 2012; Esposito et al. 2018), that would resonate with a neoliberal configuration (Jessop 2015). Those who are critical of this approach, while recognizing that decarbonizing society is an urgent necessity, also argue that this ecological transition is a strictly political process which should therefore fully consider the core principles of democratic citizenship.

Although the debate is heated, further empirical analysis is needed to shed light on the mechanisms through which the processes of depoliticization—or conversely, politicization—manifest themselves in EU policies.

The EU is a particularly relevant case to consider for several reasons. It has a complex multi-level governance structure, which combines supranational, intergovernmental, and technocratic elements. As such, authority and accountability are distributed across multiple arenas—the Commission, the Parliament, the Council, a dense network of agencies and financial instruments—each of which may embody distinct forms of legitimacy and expertise. For this reason, the EU appears particularly suitable to examine how (de)politicization processes emerge within and across multiple levels.

Moreover, processes of depoliticization and politicization should be considered in the context of the ongoing complex structural crisis faced by the EU itself. In this regard, recent scholarship (Cucca et al. 2023; Fritz and Lee 2023; Snell et al. 2023; Lawrence et al. 2024) has revitalized the notion of polycrisis. From this perspective, crises cannot be analyzed in isolation; the focus instead lies on their causal interactions, revealing how responses to one disturbance may amplify vulnerabilities in other domains. It is therefore not a matter of addressing single events, but rather the systemic architecture in which these events occur. When a system loses its equilibrium but has not yet found a new one, Lawrence et al. (2024) describe this as an “incomplete critical transition”: a period of heightened instability marked by unpredictable and potentially harmful systemic behavior. Institutions characterized by high connectivity and homogeneity, such as the EU, are particularly permeable to this form of systemic stress. The EU, in this sense, can be seen as a polity in polycrisis (Zeitlin et al. 2019).

Moreover, the interrelated crises the EU is currently facing have produced distinctive political fractures, or what Nicoli and Zeitlin (2024) call polycleavages. In this context, multiple political and institutional actors attempt to cope with uncertainty through diverse strategies, as the crises remain largely unresolved, including the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the subsequent energy and cost-of-living crises, and the surge of populist and far-right movements across member states. This conjucture has also generated new spaces for politicization, since multiple issues of different nature (economic, social, ecological, and geopolitical) have simultaneously become salient, polarizing actors across different levels of governance. As a result, non-majoritarian institutions, such as the European Commission, may adopt a more flexible stance, evolving into forms of responsive technocracy (Rauh 2016) that selectively incorporate political inputs from civil society and member states. In other respects, however, they might resort to depoliticizing current issues to mediate among conflicting interests and maintain stability in times of systemic turbulence.

The current paper aims to contribute to this debate by looking at the Just Transition Mechanism (JTM), a key component of the European Green Deal (EGD). The JTM was officially designed to support regions and workers affected by the transition away from carbon intensive industries, it provides financial and technical assistance to mitigate socio-economic challenges while promoting environmental objectives. We conducted a thematic analysis of parliamentary debates and official statements on the JTM in order to investigate the dynamics of discursive depoliticization (Hay 2014) and politicization, their nature and manifestations, and the tensions over who gets to define the terms, pace, and priorities of Europe’s green transition. In the following sections, before presenting the details of the study, we will introduce a few key points of the scientific debate on the depoliticization of environmental policies.

2. Aims

This contribution adopts the perspective on depoliticization outlined in the previous paragraphs, and as such positions itself among critical studies on European transition policies. From this perspective, the study aims to reflect on the discursive mechanisms through which depoliticization occurs (or not) in the parliamentary debates that lead to the development of key European eco-social policies (specifically, the study looks at the Just Transition Mechanism). We expect that discursive mechanisms will contribute to constructing the transition through technical, bureaucratic, and market-driven mechanisms, further reinforced by the reference to crisis and urgency. The study will further explore which discursive mechanisms are used to manage the tension between technical necessity and the political nature of choices, and between declarations of intent, technocratic governance and the rise in bottom-up pressures to radical change.

In line with this framework, we expect discursive depoliticization to occur through a set of recurrent steps: (i) framing policy issues in technical and procedural terms shifts disagreement from the political to the managerial sphere; (ii) such framing reinforces the legitimacy of technocratic and financial actors (e.g., the Commission and the European Investment Bank) while marginalizing discourses centered on justice and participation; (iii) the repetition of these patterns across institutional arenas stabilizes a language of necessity and urgency that narrows the scope for contestation. In the case of the JTM, we expect these dynamics to be observable in both parliamentary debates and official statements.

3. Understanding Depoliticization in the EU Governance

Bues and Gailing (2016) argue that depoliticization occurs when decision-making power shifts from democratic arenas to technical, bureaucratic, or market-driven mechanisms. In this context, ecological challenges may be framed as neutral and technical problems, rendering dissent illegitimate and limiting the space for alternative imaginaries. Yet, as Hay (2007) stated, politics can only flourish where choice, agency, and social interaction are present. Depoliticization is not an impersonal or inevitable process; rather, it is actively shaped by identifiable agents. In this context, states and institutions function as “meta-governors” (Fawcett and Marsh 2014), and the EU has a prominent role in setting the boundaries within which markets and national and local governance mechanisms operate. Looking at sustainability, the idea that it can be reconciled with economic growth through technological innovation is central to mainstream EU environmental discourse. However, this discourse remains silent on systemic inequalities (Blühdorn 2011) and reduces ecological transitions to issues of risk management and optimization (Hajer 1997; Baker 2008). For example, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is often framed through the lens of “competitive sustainability” (Laruffa 2022), embedding ecological challenges within a growth-oriented logic. Such framing risks narrowing the policy space by prioritizing technological and economic solutions at the expense of broader transformative agendas that might otherwise promote well-being, global justice, and ecological balance. Even the EGD remains institutionally anchored to incrementalism and technocratic control, revealing the limits of its transformative potential (Dupont et al. 2023). This dominant framework in EU environmental policymaking is also exemplified in key documents like the Green Paper (2007), White Paper (2009), and Adaptation Strategy (2013). As noted by Remling (2018), these texts reflect an overreliance on expert-driven governance. Therefore, EU governance, while deeply politicized in its impact, would foreclose genuine democratic deliberation (Scicluna and Auer 2019), particularly in times of crisis. Such an approach would reinforce a depoliticized paradigm that privileges neutral innovation and growth—for example by presenting these challenges as matters of “good governance” rooted solely in scientific data and technological fixes—while sidelining the structural changes needed to achieve social and environmental justice.

Yet, recent developments suggest that this mainstream discourse is increasingly contested. As a matter of fact, this contestation is not merely between technocratic elites and national publics, but involves competing visions of identity, solidarity, and conflict (Kuhn 2019; Coman et al. 2020). For example, the EU’s turn towards an active and interventive industrial policy may signal a rupture with the neoliberal tradition of technocratic market governance, leaving space for instances of re-politicization (McNamara 2023). In this sense, EU decision-making would be shifting from “policy without politics” to “policy with politics” (Schmidt 2019), a transformation driven especially by public contestation from below, in the form of a battle of ideas (Castro 2012).

In the face of rising politicization, however, the Commission did not always seek greater democratic engagement, but rather entrenched its regulatory authority, reasserting its independence through expansive but depoliticized recommendations (Van der Veer and Haverland 2018). Such strategies are however inherently unstable, as they would open the field to cycles of politicization and contestation (Barbé and Morillas 2019). For example, Börzel and Risse (2018) argue that during the eurozone crisis, EU elites sought to depoliticize economic governance by delegating fiscal and surveillance powers to non-majoritarian institutions, such as the Commission and the ECB. This strategy came at a political cost, fueling distrust and the rise of populist right-wing parties. In contrast, during the Schengen crisis, depoliticization failed from the outset. Right wing forces mobilized nationalist and exclusionary arguments, focusing on external boundaries and who is “inside” or “outside” Europe (Bergmann and Müller 2021). In both cases, identity played a central role.

Regarding the ecological transition, it is reasonable to assume that depoliticization would be reinforced by recurring rhetorical patterns—or argumentative topoi (Reisigl and Wodak 2001)—that justify claims through appeals to expert authority, moral imperatives, historical lessons, and shared European identity. Similarly, Swyngedouw (2010, 2011, 2018) showed how depoliticized climate discourse constructs common enemies, such as the framing of CO₂ as a universal antagonist, to unite humanity against a perceived threat. What Swyngedouw calls “climate populism” masks the deeper systemic roots of ecological vulnerability, including capitalist exploitation and uneven development.

In the next section, we will examine some key studies that suggest these mechanisms are fully reflected in European policies.

4. Critical Scholarship on EU’s Environmental Policy

The EGD represents the EU’s most ambitious environmental initiative to date. Yet its structure reveals a strong reliance on technocratic governance that limits the scope of climate action. Born out of overlapping crises—the financial crash, the Eurozone debt turmoil, and the climate emergency—the EGD emerged as what Kingdon (2014) would call a policy window, a moment in which public policy change becomes possible through the convergence of a shared problem definition within institutional arenas and a politically viable solution. However, this opportunity was quickly shaped by established managerial practices. The language of transformation shifted toward deliverables: carbon reductions, renewable installations, financial mobilizations. This reflects Hay’s (2001) argument that crises are narrated to justify preferred policy paths, often reinforcing ecological modernization logics that promise efficiency without structural change (Dryzek 2013; Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000). At the center of this governance model is the European Commission. Its role expanded during the fiscal crisis, positioning it as what Jessop (2015) calls a “meta-governor”. The Commission coordinates a complex system of regulations, taxonomies and funding mechanisms while presenting its interventions as neutral expertise. Schmidt (2019) argues that such discourse appeals simultaneously to markets and citizens. The EGD does the same: it offers green growth to investors and environmental security to the public, thereby consolidating expert authority while limiting democratic contestation. This institutional framing has consequences. Dupont and Oberthür (2016) note a shift from bold climate leadership to a more technical form of policy delivery. Targets are negotiated through dashboards and models rather than open ideological debates. In this sense, depoliticizing dynamics of this kind recur across the main instruments of the EGD. Disputes over what counts as “green” or “fair” are recast as technical design questions: the EU Taxonomy defines sustainable investment through delegated acts; the Governance Regulation turns national discretion into compliance with reporting templates; the ETS and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism embed distributive conflicts into pricing formulas and verification rules; and the JTM translates social justice into eligibility and absorption rates. In each case, contestation is displaced from the political arena to procedural and metric spaces, where disagreement persists but is rendered administrable.

In global forums, these tools are used as evidence of EU credibility (Schreurs 2016), reinforcing a model of data-driven diplomacy. Yet, as Jordan and Moore (2020) warn, such instrumentation can restrict the policy agenda to options that fit existing metrics, sidelining more transformative proposals. Accountability becomes upward-facing, tied to indicators, peer reviews and benchmarks, mechanisms that often determine which actors are seen as legitimate.

This technocratic path is also self-reinforcing. Pierson’s (2000) theory of increasing returns suggests that once a governance model takes root, alternatives become harder to develop. Von Homeyer et al. (2021) note how Environmental Policy Integration has been reduced to box-ticking exercises, rarely challenging core economic assumptions. The EGD continues this pattern. It absorbs social concerns through conditional funding and impact assessments, often avoiding deeper political questions about ownership, labor and territory. Participation is expanded in form, but not always in substance.

Crisis, intended as an interpretative frame more than an event (Hay 2001), accelerates this trend and tends to prioritize short-term stability (Boin et al. 2016). Despite the fact that crisis discourse has elevated the rank of climate policy in the agenda and mobilized significant resources, it has also locked environmental governance into a technocratic model. By casting climate urgency as an investment sequencing challenge, political choice is reframed as technical necessity and contestation is displaced, filtered through economic models and compliance routines. The EGD echoes this logic, offering substantial green stimulus without revisiting distributional inequalities. The Climate Pact invites engagement, but remains secondary to the Sustainable Finance agenda, where technical panels set thresholds and metrics. Following Jordan and Moore (2020), we argue that the promise of transformation remains constrained by the very instruments used to implement it. Without creating space for meaningful deliberation, the same tools that once enabled coordination may now limit the deeper structural changes implied by Just Transition rhetoric. The EGD reflects the logic of ecological modernization, where carbon neutrality becomes a competitive asset rather than a collective goal. Industrial sites are rebranded as “hydrogen valleys”, logistics hubs as “green corridors”, and financial systems as engines of ecological repair.

As Dryzek (2013) notes, such discourses often marginalize justice-oriented claims, alternative economic visions, or alternative forms of knowledge. For example, tools like life-cycle assessments or marginal abatement curves allow for interoperability across institutions and markets but do so by reducing complex social realities to standardized data. Civil society actors calling for degrowth, commons-based energy or slower transitions must reframe their demands in econometric language to be heard. Other instruments such as emissions trading schemes, taxonomies or regulatory benchmarks are often presented as objective tools, yet they embed normative assumptions about growth, efficiency and risk. As such, they tend to translate disagreement into measurable outputs and performance indicators.

Some literature, on the other side, would suggest that the European Green Deal (EGD) could still open significant opportunities for democratic renewal, innovation, and integration within the EU’s sustainability agenda. The Deal would mark a qualitative shift toward a more coherent and cross-sectoral climate governance architecture, integrating social, environmental, and economic goals under a single framework (Dupont et al. 2023). It would also enhance multi-level coordination and embed the idea of a just transition across scales of governance, potentially enabling more inclusive and context-sensitive approaches to policy implementation (Sandmann et al. 2024). From a political–institutional perspective, the EGD would demonstrate how strategic narratives can mobilize legitimacy and policy coherence: by invoking solidarity, well-being and inclusion, the Commission and Parliament were able to expand their authority and secure the swift approval of the European Climate Law (Domorenok and Graziano 2023). In addition, the Deal would foster a new form of civic engagement and environmental responsibility, potentially strengthening a shared sense of green European citizenship (Machin and Tan 2022). Empirical analyses also suggest that the EGD would align closely with several Sustainable Development Goals—particularly those related to clean energy, climate action and sustainable production—indicating measurable progress toward systemic sustainability (Koundouri et al. 2024). Beyond the EU’s borders, the EGD would have the potential to act as a catalyst for cooperative diplomacy and green investment in the Southern Mediterranean, creating opportunities for shared growth and decarbonization (Sandri et al. 2025). Nonetheless, it is important to note that the second von der Leyen Commission (2024–2029) has recalibrated the EGD to reflect a changing political and economic environment. Within this context, the Commission has increasingly framed the EGD not only as a decarbonization strategy but also as an instrument for industrial renewal and geopolitical resilience. This shift has taken institutional form through a series of policy adjustments that reduce the regulatory burden on firms and temper the scope of some environmental commitments. For instance, the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Regulation was withdrawn after intense farmer protests; the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive was postponed and limited to very large companies; the sustainability reporting directive (CSRD) was revised to exclude most small and medium-sized enterprises; the deforestation regulation was delayed by two years; and emissions targets for the automotive sector were extended. A clear illustration of this shift can be found in President von der Leyen’s address to the European Parliament on 18 July 2024, where she first used the expression “Clean Industrial Deal”, referring to a new phase of the EGD. Although not a formal policy act, this political formula encapsulates the Commission’s intention to recast the EGD as a strategy to strengthen European industry, reduce strategic dependencies, and preserve employment in an increasingly competitive and volatile global context.

However, as environmental stakes rise and distributional conflicts become more visible citizens, movements and municipalities are increasingly challenging the dominant paradigms, pushing for approaches rooted in justice, sufficiency and collective governance. Whether EU policy can accommodate these emerging demands without reverting to technocratic containment remains an open question.

5. Material and Methods

5.1. The Just Transition Mechanism in Short

The current paper focuses on the JTM, which is one of the key financial and policy instruments, if not the main one, established by the European Union as part of the EGD. According to the European Commission (EC), its purpose is to support regions, industries, and workers most affected by the transition to a climate-neutral economy, addressing the impact of transitioning away from fossil fuels and carbon-intensive industries. It is structured around three main pillars:

• The Just Transition Fund (Pillar 1) allocates €19.7 billion, primarily in the form of grants, to mitigate the social and economic costs of achieving climate neutrality for EU Member States. The fund’s main objective is to support the economic restructuring of affected regions by promoting workforce upskilling;
• The Dedicated Just Transition Scheme under InvestEU (Pillar 2) aims to mobilize resources by leveraging public funding to attract private investments. It focuses on projects in regions with approved transition plans and addresses the decarbonization of energy infrastructure along with the diversification of clean energy production;
• The Public Sector Loan Facility with the European Investment Bank (EIB) (Pillar 3) seeks to mobilize between €25 and €30 billion in investments through concessional loans targeted at the public sector. It supports projects that lack sufficient market-based revenue streams and complements initiatives under InvestEU.

In addition to these pillars, the JTM provides technical assistance, facilitates state aid, and operates on territorial just transition plans, approved by the European Commission (EC). Embedded within the broader context of EU policies, the JTM is expected to mobilize approximately €55 billion between 2021 and 2027.

A key requirement for accessing JTM funding is the preparation and submission of Territorial Just Transition Plans (TJTPs). These plans are developed by Member States in consultation with regional authorities, partners, and other stakeholders. The TJTPs identify regions most impacted by the transition (often those reliant on carbon-intensive industries) and outline proposals for mitigating the transition’s effects, such as economic diversification and workforce reskilling. The European Commission reviews these plans to ensure alignment with EU climate neutrality goals and funding criteria.

5.2. Textual Corpus

The corpus for this study comprised a range of parliamentary debates and statements from the European Commission, specifically addressing the JTM. To collect parliamentary data, we retrieved plenary session transcripts from the European Parliament’s online archive, using the following keywords: “just transition”, “just transition mechanism”, “just transition fund”, “JTM”, “public sector loan facility”. Ultimately, three debates dated 14 January 2020; 17 May 2021; and 24 June 2021 were identified, encompassing a total of n = 149 interventions. Non-English interventions were translated. Additionally, n = 12 statements from European Commissioners, drawn from keynote speeches and conference introductions, were incorporated to capture the executive perspective on the JTM.

The chronological scope of these materials reflects key turning points in the JTM’s evolution. The first debate (January 2020) introduced the JTM as part of the European Green Deal, focusing on support for regions and workers facing the externalities of decarbonization, e.g., job losses. The second debate (May 2021) took place as the JTM moved toward practical implementation and alignment with broader EU climate objectives. By the third debate (June 2021), attention had turned to the Public Sector Loan Facility, the JTM’s third pillar.

5.3. Categories of Analysis

All collected textual data were subjected to a thematic analysis choosing categories of analysis both deductively (derived from existing depoliticization literature) and inductively (derived from the transcripts themselves). Deductively, they draw on key dimensions identified in the literature on depoliticization and governance, particularly the distinction between technocratic, bureaucratic, and market-based forms of authority. Inductively, they emerged from a close reading of the parliamentary debates, allowing the analytical framework to remain sensitive to the specific discursive patterns that characterize the discussion on the JTM. The coding process followed Braun and Clarke’s (2006) widely used framework for thematic analysis, which involves familiarization with the data, generation of initial codes, identification of themes, and iterative refinement through discussion among authors. Coding was conducted in two stages to ensure reliability and intersubjective agreement on the application of themes and categories.

The materials were coded according to four categories/codes: Conflict, Authority, Agency and Actors, and Futuring. Each of these codes encompasses specific sub-dimensions that structure how political issues are framed in parliamentary discourse (see

Table 1. Thematic coding matrix for categories of depoliticization.

Code	Subcode	Example	Frequencies
Conflict	Economic	“I negotiated for more money to be invested…”	n = 71
	Technical	“Nuclear power could have been one of our assets…”	n = 37
	National	“JTF excludes many regions of Poland”	n = 21
	Intra-Eu	“The Commission is insistent. It doesn’t want to accept negotiations and discussions”	n = 16
	Neutralized	“Europe is united in its social orientation”	n = 43
	Euphemized	“Most excluded people are confronted with the impact of the transition”	n = 17
	Acknowledged	“There can be no just transition while the power of corporations and super rich are not limited”	n = 4
Authority	Moral	“Our territories are suffering, hence…”	n = 29
	Institutional	“Federal Constitution Court agrees with us”	n = 25
	Market-based	“If we invest three points of GDP, we get three points back…”	n = 13
	Scientific	“A strong assessment must be based on science, not ideology”	n = 1
Agency	Institutional	“The EU puts our words into concrete action…”	n = 44
	Adaptive	“Without JTF, regions could not make it on their own”	n = 46
	Hierarchical	“EU regions receive money to invest in future jobs”	n = 23
	Collective	“Every member state and region must do its part”	n = 11
	Consultative	“Workers and unions in these sectors must have their say”	n = 9
Futuring	Mobilization of capital	“The EIB will finance billions in public investments…”	n = 33
	Challenging	“There is still much to be done for inclusivity and fairness”	n = 30
	Bright	“The future of a climate-neutral Europe begins now”	n = 11
	Generational Impact	“We must pay the most attention to young people”	n = 10

). The four main themes capture overarching themes that shape the JTM debate: Thus:

• Agency and actors’ depiction: this code captures how different actors (whether institutional, collective, or individual) are presented and their capacity to act, take responsibility, or influence outcomes. It includes how actors are depicted (e.g., as allies or enemies). Moreover, it considers how agency is distributed across actors. Looking at the levels of governance, for instance, it considers whether EU institutions are positioned as central implementers, who is portrayed as dependent on external support, and whether responsibility is framed as shared among regions and member states. Finally, the category considers the relative positions that actors are assigned within the discourse. Some are depicted as proactive and solution-oriented, others as dynamic forces for change, others as obstructive or resistant.
• Authority: within processes of depoliticization, different principles of authority can be discursively used. Epistemic justice, for example, can manifest by giving or subtracting authority, some actors, for example, appear as figures of wisdom or experience, while others are presented as young. Authority also emerges in the way issues at stake are constructed; for example, their neutrality is functional to invoke technical rationality as the only valid principle guiding decision-making.
• Conflict: this category includes texts that explicitly refer to conflict, showing how disputes, oppositions, and antagonisms are articulated, managed or thematized. Although conflict may not be present in every intervention, analyzing it provides crucial insights into key patterns within the corpus.
• Futuring: this code collects parliamentary discourse that contributes to the “there is no alternative” discourse or that constructs alternative visions of what lies ahead. It thus reveals how political possibilities are framed, negated, or constrained. The alternative dimensions identified were as follows: mobilization of resources, emphasizing the need of further financial and logistical investments for achieving transitions; bright visions, projecting optimism and transformative potential; generational impact, focusing on the responsibilities and opportunities for younger generations; radical change challenging narratives, highlighting the need for a radical alternative to overcome obstacles to inclusivity and fairness.

As outlined above, the depoliticization of environmental policymaking should be enacted by discursively constructing themes as non-conflictual, neutral and at the same time non-negotiable, this, in turn, may reinforce forms of “consultocracy” and abstract moral frameworks, contributing to construct decisions as inevitable. More radical forms of discursive “climate populism” (Swyngedouw 2010, 2011, 2018) should further include appeals to follow authorities by identifying common and external enemies which would not require internal conflict and political engagement. On the contrary, politicization should discursively emerge through the assertion of conflict, competing futures, and symbolic roles that reintroduce political agency of citizens and communities.

6. Results

Building on the analytical framework, this section presents the findings of the qualitative content analysis, the identified codes and their distribution across different typologies of text considered.

6.1. Conflict

Economic concerns were the most frequently coded category (n = 71), followed by technical dimensions (n = 37), nationalistic/national conflicts (n = 21), and intra-EU institutional conflicts (n = 16). There is a significant presence of deliberately neutralized conflict (n = 43), where Europe is portrayed as united in its social orientation, pursuing decarbonization in line with treaty commitments (e.g., “not only be compatible for everyone, but actually be beneficial for anyone”, “because in Europe we do not compromise on our key goals”). In some cases, conflicts are recognized but treated with little importance (n = 17), whereas instances acknowledging contradictions in the development model or capital-labor conflicts are extremely rare (n = 4), such as the statement “There can be no just transition while the resources, property, and power of corporations and the super-rich are not limited”.

Overall, the predominance of an economic and technical framing of conflict is apparent across the discourse. This is mirrored in the frequent appeals to external authorities to justify decisions. The reference to moral imperatives is frequent (n = 29), often drawing on MEPs’ personal experiences. For instance, statements such as “myself, coming from the Czech Republic where there are three coal regions”, “we must help SMEs”, or “our territories are suffering” illustrate that, overall, conflict is consistently presented through the language of territorial equity and budgetary competition.

Speakers return again and again to regions, countries and sectors, underscoring anxieties about who will receive support when coal facilities close, which industrial clusters will be modernized first and how diverging labor markets will absorb displaced workers. Terms linked to money, investment and funds appear connected with place-markers. Arguments often hinge on whether a particular member state stands to “lose jobs”, whether a “coal region” will obtain “sufficient cohesion resources” or whether a “sector” qualifies for tailored aid. In this way conflict is channeled into a debate over financial magnitude and distribution rather than on the strategic ends of decarbonization itself, presenting rivalry less as ideological confrontation than as an exercise in allocation and compensation.

Institutional references further shape this territorial contest. Speakers invoke the Commission, Parliament, Council and the European Investment Bank when staking claims or contesting rules, but friction among those bodies is seldom made explicit; instead, tension is displaced onto the vertical axis between the Union and its member states. Even when institutional mandates are questioned, the criticism remains procedural, whether the “criteria” are fair or the “instrument” flexible enough, rather than challenging the foundations of the transition’s governance. Social conflict is acknowledged, yet it is reframed through a compensatory lens. References to workers, citizens and people surface alongside assurances that “support”, “cohesion” and “protection” mechanisms will avoid social conflicts. Harder notions such as exploitation, power or inequality are largely absent, signaling that the plight of affected communities is understood as a temporary disruption to be mended with training schemes or targeted grants. This positions labor not as a collective force capable of organizing conflict, but as a constituency to be assisted once decisions have already been taken.

Technical disagreement appears where speakers debate energy sources, infrastructure and timelines, yet even these disputes are swiftly translated into questions of feasibility and cost. Phrases concerning risk, rule and condition portray such arguments as engineering hurdles to be cleared through better planning. The repeated pairing of economy with energy, climate and transformation stresses that environmental ambition remains intertwined with growth expectations; conflict therefore centers on balancing carbon goals with economic performance rather than on questioning growth itself. Only isolated interventions gesture toward deeper structural antagonisms. Brief allusions to the concentration of corporate power or the imbalance between capital and labor emerge, but they are quickly overshadowed by more pragmatic appeals to efficiency, budget and market incentives. The prevailing result is a portrait of conflict that is intense yet narrow: intense because resources are finite and regional disparities are evident; narrow because the terms of debate are confined to distribution within an accepted economic frame. Structural critiques that might recast the transition as a struggle over models of development remain largely at the margins of parliamentary attention.

6.2. Authority

Beyond morally oriented claims, authority is most grounded in institutional references (n = 25). Speakers appeal to treaty commitments, “the objectives of the Paris Agreement”, or to external juridical and constitutional decisions, “the Federal Constitutional Court agrees with us”, thereby anchoring their arguments in established legal or procedural frameworks. A second, though smaller, source of legitimation is economic authority (n = 13), where efficiency metrics and investment multipliers carry persuasive weight: “if we invest one point of GDP in these countries, we get the effect of three points in their economy”, or, in relation to crowding in capital, “we must make the scheme so attractive that private investors are willing to get involved”.

Scientific authority is invoked only once, in a call for “a strong and precise impact assessment of regulations… based on science, not ideology”. The rarity of such references indicates that, within this debate, legal-institutional and market logics eclipse appeals to scientific expertise.

First, institutional references are the most common. Speakers frequently cite the mandates of the European Commission, Parliament, and Council, as well as treaty provisions and recently adopted legislation, to frame proposals as procedurally grounded. Typical formulations include “the Commission has set clear eligibility criteria”, “our choices must respect the Climate Law”, and “this measure follows Article 174”. These references present policy actions as compliant with pre-established rules and help structure debate around the formal decision-making architecture of the Union. Second, economic reasoning forms a significant strand. Interventions often rely on investment multipliers, budget ratios, and market incentives to justify preferred options. Examples include “every euro mobilized through the Fund can generate three in private investment” and “the scheme delivers the best return for taxpayers”.

Such statements use quantifiable data to substantiate claims about efficiency and fiscal prudence, situating financial performance at the center of legitimacy. Third, moral appeals appear in personal or constituency-based narratives. Members describe the situation of miners, industrial workers, or households facing energy poverty to emphasize an ethical responsibility to act. Typical expressions are “no child should grow up next to a coal heap” or “we owe our citizens a fair chance in the new economy”. These references bring concrete social experiences into the debate while supporting the need for targeted support measures. Finally, explicit reliance on scientific authority is rare. Only isolated statements call for “strong and precise impact assessments based on science, not ideology” or point to evidence from climate research. Where it appears, science is used to validate the accuracy of regulatory tools rather than to introduce new empirical arguments. Across the material, these four forms of authority are often combined in single interventions. For example, an MEP may cite treaty obligations, outline projected returns on investment, and invoke social responsibility within the same turn. Institutional and economic registers dominate numerically, while moral references supply individualized illustrations of need, and scientific citations provide occasional confirmation of regulatory soundness.

6.3. Agency and Actors’ Depiction

Agency in the corpus is distributed unevenly, with clear hierarchies that assign initiative and decision-making power primarily to EU-level bodies. The largest share of references (n = 44) highlights institutional agency: the European Parliament, the Commission, and associated bodies such as the European Investment Bank are depicted as the engines that translate policy goals into concrete action. Typical interventions stress that “the EU starts to put into concrete action those words that we have said” or that “the European Investment Bank will get involved in supporting the projects necessary for decarbonization”. Responsibility, in other words, resides first and foremost with “Europe” conceived as a set of authoritative institutions rather than as a community of deliberating publics. A comparable number of statements (n = 46) attribute a resilient or adaptive agency to regions, territories, and local actors that stand to receive funding. These actors are portrayed as capable of adjustment if EU resources flow: “Without the JTF, regions could not make it on their own”, and “The people, the enterprises and the regions that will have to adapt … will receive the most support from the EU”. This recognizes local capacity, yet simultaneously casts it as contingent on external assistance, reinforcing a dependence relationship between Brussels and the periphery. Hierarchical agency appears explicitly in roughly a quarter of the references (n = 23). Here, European institutions are presented as directing the transition while sub-national entities execute plans: “EU regions receive money that they can invest in the people and in the jobs of the future”. Collective agency is mentioned far less often (n = 11); when it surfaces, it is formulated in broad exhortations, “every member state and every region must do their part”, rather than in detailed accounts of shared governance. Cases in which actors are considered parts of a consultation are the rarest (n = 9). Although certain speakers insist that “workers and unions in these sectors have their say”, such appeals remain largely rhetorical and are not accompanied by descriptions of concrete participatory mechanisms. The scarcity of participatory language underscores the limited space accorded to bottom-up influence. Within this distribution of agency, specific actor portrayals consolidate the hierarchy. The Just Transition Fund itself is repeatedly described as the instrument that will “ensure that the transition towards climate neutrality occurs in a socially responsible manner”, positioning the Fund as the decisive lever of change. European institutions are cast as proactive guardians of justice, “the Union is endowed with a new tool to promote social fairness”, and as sources of expertise and guidance, “the Commission’s calculations oblige us to reflect with rigor and coherence”. By contrast, entities that might impede progress are seldom personified; when blame is apportioned, it is typically assigned to abstract threats such as “the climate crisis” or “pollution”, with only a single intervention pointing to “corporations and the super-rich” as obstacles to a genuinely just transition. oversight functions surface in references to external financial actors that control access to capital, exemplified by statements about the European Investment Bank’s gate-keeping role. Taken together, these patterns delineate an architecture in which EU institutions initiate and steer, regions adapt under prescribed conditions, and broad-based participation remains largely notional.

6.4. Futuring

Mentions of alternative futures permeate the corpus in a vocabulary that is concrete, quantified, and strongly oriented toward finance, timelines, and milestones.

A first envisioned alternative looks at the future as business as usual, yet enhanced by greater investments. Speakers most frequently predict the scale of forthcoming investment (n = 33). Illustrative wording includes: “The European Investment Bank will channel €30 billion over the next decade”, “Member States must match every euro from the Fund with national co-financing”, and “By 2027 the facility should have leveraged at least €55 billion in private capital”. Such statements repeat across interventions, creating an image of tomorrow that is measured by the size of financial flows rather than by qualitative social or ecological shifts. The repeated pairing of future tenses with words such as “investment”, “budget”, “fund”, and “money” underscores an expectation that success will be demonstrated through the mobilization of large sums.

Another recurrent element is the construction of future alternatives as deadlines and milestones to be reached. Alternatives are thus constrained by the calendar of transition targets (n = 30). Years and decades structure forward-looking speech: 2027 for mid-term disbursement, 2030 for emission reduction checkpoints, 2050 for full climate neutrality. Examples include: “The interim target of forty-five per cent reduction by 2030 is non-negotiable”, “Regions must lodge their investment plans before 2025”, and “A carbon-neutral economy by 2050 is the guiding star for every decision we take today”. These dates are presented as unavoidable reference points, lending a sense of inevitability and discipline to the discussion of forthcoming action. Also, when presenting obstacles that lie ahead, speakers adopt the same typology of discourse based on finance and scheduling. Words such as “challenge”, “impact”, “cost”, and “risk” are paired with territorial markers (“coal basin”, “mining area”, “industrial cluster”). Sample statements include: “Transforming the Silesian coal basin will require skills programmes for ten thousand workers”, and “Eastern regions face a funding gap of at least two billion if current plans are not topped up”. These remarks identify concrete hurdles, but invariably conclude with further calls for capital: “additional grants”, “bridge financing”, or “loan guarantees”.

Alongside sober acknowledgements of risk, a smaller group of interventions projects optimism (n = 11). Discourses in this group depict the future as characterized by positive alternatives even though these are mainly based on economic dimensions. Speakers herald “new jobs in clean steel”, “opportunities in green hydrogen”, or “a decade of innovation led by European firms”. One Member insists, “The future of a climate-neutral Europe begins now, in the hands of our engineers and entrepreneurs”, while another claims, “Every euro invested today will return three in added value within ten years”. Such remarks are often linked to flagship instruments: the Just Transition Fund, the Public Sector Loan Facility, InvestEU windows. Optimism is therefore anchored in the expectation that policy mechanisms will unlock, once again, growth and competitiveness.

A third alternative future focuses on generational responsibility (n = 10). Interventions refer explicitly to “young people”, “children”, or “future Europeans”. Typical sentences are: “We owe it to our youth to leave them a livable planet”, and “Every decision we postpone today raises the cost for the next generation”. These notes of moral obligation rarely expand into detailed proposals for youth participation or intergenerational governance, the result is a gloom but vague alternative vision, which however adds an ethical register that complements the economic and technical language already noted. Finally, references to scientific evidence, lifestyle change, or alternative development models are notably sparse. Science is invoked mainly in passing, “impact assessments will confirm our trajectory”, and words associated with deep socio-ecological shifts, such as “degrowth” or “post-growth”, do not surface at all. In sum, the prevailing future emerging from the analysis is one of linear progress: more capital, clear targets, incremental technological improvements, and a steady march toward headline neutrality goals. The dataset portrays tomorrow as a financial and managerial project mapped onto specific years and expressed through large monetary figures, with limited space devoted to radically different visions of how societies might live, produce, or consume once the transition is complete.

7. Discussion

Our analysis confirms that the parliamentary debates on the Just Transition Mechanism (JTM) fully reproduce the depoliticization dynamics already identified by critical scholarship on the European Green Deal (EGD). Far from serving as an arena where alternative visions of socio-ecological transformation confront one another, the institutional discourse reduces conflict to a question of technical-economic efficiency: who receives which funds, on what timetable, and under what enabling conditions. This technocratic turn merges with a vocabulary of competitiveness which risks eclipsing social justice as a benchmark for a just transition. In this sense, our data show that the JTM is not merely a financial instrument, but a discursive device that may neutralize the more conflictual aspects of the transition, in perfect consistency with the TINA logic (“There Is No Alternative”) highlighted by Jessop (2015). Therefore, structural tensions (between capital and labor, core and periphery, growth and planetary limits) are transformed into competitions for financial envelopes or investment benchmarks. This approach may tend to recast the transition as a cohesion-fund management problem, sidelining more radical distributive themes. Even when the risk of industrial desertification is evoked, the proposed remedy is invariably further capital mobilization (“additional grants”, “loan guarantees”), confirming the hypothesis (Machin 2019) that depoliticization works by translating contestation into cost-benefit calculation. This does not mean, however, that conflict is absent from the data. Indeed, sparks of contestation do surface, yet they are confined to merely technical questions. In other words, politicization occurs, but only within the parameters of an already technified frame: the “battleground” is narrowed to eligibility formulas, not to the underlying distribution of power or to alternative models of prosperity. This resonates with what Morena et al. (2018) describe as a managerial reform approach to Just Transition. In this conception, greater equity and justice are pursued within the existing economic system, without questioning its dominant power relations or growth-oriented structure. Certain rules and standards can be revised—such as those concerning employment, occupational safety, or training opportunities—but the broader economic model remains unchanged. This approach relies on compensatory measures, investment incentives, and social dialogue among institutional actors, rather than on redistributive or transformative change. The emphasis on financial allocation, institutional efficiency, and market coordination observed in the debates reflects this managerial orientation. As Radaelli (2022) has argued in his work on “second order politicization”, when conflict is absorbed into procedural minutiae the space for genuine programmatic opposition contracts, reinforcing the very depoliticizing logic it ostensibly challenges. This discursive architecture rests on registers of legitimation. Appeals to institutional authority (treaties, the Climate Law, financial regulations) and to economic efficiency (investment multipliers, competitiveness rankings) eclipse both scientific authority (virtually absent) and civic authority. In this context, the limited visibility of scientific authority in the corpus does not necessarily imply a lack of scientific grounding in EU environmental policy. The scientific consensus on climate change and decarbonization may be so firmly established within the institutional setting that it no longer requires explicit reference in parliamentary debate.

Overall, the results suggest that decisions with massive redistributive impact are presented as the optimization of financial flows. The distribution of agency in parliamentary discourse replicates a top-down model in which the EU “sets the transition in motion” and regions “adjust” thanks to the funds provided. The rhetoric of social fairness appears in moral appeals to support affected regions and workers, yet it often intertwines with pre-established legal or economic frameworks that treat the transition as a matter of efficiency. As a result, although the parliamentary interventions allude to the importance of a socially balanced decarbonization, they rarely question the broader hegemonic logics at play. This is also reflected in the near-total absence of explicit recognition of tensions or social conflicts inherent in the processes of transition. Furthermore, although the discourse repeatedly praises the objective of social justice, it does not substantially explore the ways in which local communities, trade unions, or grassroots networks could shape the transition. This is consistent with how agency and roles are constructed across the debate, reflecting a hierarchy in which European institutions are positioned as the principal drivers of the transition, while regions and territories assume a predominantly adaptive role. European institutions are frequently presented as central actors with the authority and expertise to lead the transition, embodying an institutional agency that underscores their directive capacity. This not only consolidates the perception of institutional leadership but also positions these bodies as the primary agents capable of ensuring the success of the JTM. At the same time, regions and territories are ascribed a resilient and adaptive agency, emphasizing their capacity to adjust to the demands of the transition with the support of European resources. While this portrayal acknowledges the agency of subnational actors, it implicitly casts them as dependent on top-down guidance, reinforcing a hierarchical structure. This aligns with Fawcett and Marsh’s (2014) assertion that depoliticization is closely tied to a hierarchical conception of policymaking, where authority and decision-making are concentrated in institutional actors at the top of the governance structure.

The symbolic roles constructed in the discourse further strengthen this hierarchical narrative. European institutions are often depicted as “heroes”, leading the charge for justice and fairness, or providing wisdom and strategic vision. In contrast, subnational actors are largely absent from symbolic narratives of leadership, their role instead presented as supportive and responsive. Moving forward, the most evident limitation emerging from the data is the lack of transformative visions. The corpus suggests that the future is predominantly articulated through a language of financial and procedural optimization, more capital mobilized, tighter deadlines, emission reduction targets, while the idea of alternative futures remains largely absent. Rather than serving as a space for rethinking production, consumption, or social relations, the future is presented as a linear extension of the present, governed by metrics and bounded by institutional routines. This narrowing of horizons may lead to a crisis of coherence: cultural tensions, industrial rivalries, and unmet social demands are not resolved but deferred, risking a breakdown of the very framework meant to manage transition. The representation of scale and scope within this discourse also raises critical questions. The documents analyzed do not explicitly contest the premises of intervention, instead, they reiterate the legitimacy of existing tools and categories, sectoral planning, funding streams, procedural safeguards, without questioning the assumptions on which they rest. Other reports may point to a fragmentation of policy instruments and a lack of binding mechanisms linking environmental and social goals, suggesting that what appears as a rational architecture may in fact be a loosely assembled set of logics, each operating in isolation. In this context, the promise of coherence becomes more of an aspiration than a structuring principle. Recent contributions, such as Pellizzoni (2023), further show how these calculative assemblages shape subjectivities of responsibility and resilience, embedding transition within a managerial approach (Clarke and Newman 1997; Joerges and Weimer 2012; Esposito et al. 2018) that curtails more contentious or redistributive possibilities. Therefore, the parliamentary discourse, as reflected in the data, does not merely reproduce technocratic language, it may also contribute to silencing or marginalizing alternative futures that challenge dominant narratives of growth, competitiveness, and institutional neutrality. The effect is not neutral. By narrowing the terms of the debate, this discursive regime may foreclose more ambitious or conflictual understandings of justice, treating them as external to the field of policy rather than constitutive of it. In this sense, while the Parliament constitutes the most visible arena of debate, the European Commission largely defines the terms of that debate through agenda-setting, regulatory drafting, and control over financial instruments. As a result, depoliticization in the EU is not the outcome of a single institution but of the interaction among several levels of authority. The patterns observed here gain particular relevance in the present polycrisis, in which environmental, economic, and social pressures converge and reinforce each other. To strengthen the transformative potential of the EGD, EU institutions could use the JTM not only as a financial tool, but also as a democratic platform enabling deliberation across levels of governance. The systematic absence of local and collective agency in parliamentary discourse highlights the need for stronger participatory architectures—for instance, through formal inclusion of municipalities, unions, and community organizations in the preparation and monitoring of Territorial Just Transition Plans. An additional aspect that remains largely overlooked concerns the treatment of social conflict. When conflict is neutralized rather than openly addressed, important feedback from affected actors is lost, which in turn undermines the legitimacy and long-term effectiveness of the transition.

8. Conclusions

This study examines parliamentary debates and official statements on the Just Transition Mechanism (JTM), showing how dynamics of depoliticization permeate institutional communication and shape both the boundaries and the possibilities of Europe’s ecological transition. We started from the assumption that the transition is not only a technical and financial process but also a deeply political and discursive one. From this perspective, strategies that foreground technocratic rationality and apparent neutrality—reducing conflict to questions of financial distribution and technical feasibility—play a central role in consolidating the dominance of a particular governance model.

Our analysis reveals that conflict is present but channeled almost exclusively through the language of budgetary allocation, efficiency, and feasibility. EU institutions emerge as the main agents of authority and initiative, often depicted as the “heroes” of social justice, while regions and territories are framed largely in adaptive and dependent roles. Visions of the future are articulated primarily in quantitative terms—capital mobilization, deadlines, emission-reduction targets—rather than through alternative imaginaries rooted in social justice, democracy, or transformative development models. In this way, the JTM operates not only as a financial instrument but also as a discursive device that helps to neutralize the political nature of transition.

Yet this very depoliticization also exposes a structural fragility: framing the transition as a managerial and technical challenge risks obscuring distributive tensions, social conflicts, and demands for justice that cannot easily be absorbed into efficiency logics. Recent contestations within the EU suggest that spaces of politicization remain open. New actors, movements, and local communities are pressing for a reconfiguration of who decides, who speaks, and whose futures are envisioned. In this sense, our contribution offers a critical benchmark for understanding how instruments like the JTM are constructed and legitimized discursively, while also identifying potential openings for alternative practices of climate justice. Future research should move beyond institutional arenas, bringing in marginalized voices (trade unions, municipalities, environmental justice movements) to assess whether and how they can reshape the field of transition. For a transition to be truly “just”, it is not enough to mobilize capital or meet deadlines: it requires creating spaces for plural deliberation, recognizing conflict and difference, and allowing multiple, contested futures to emerge.

Therefore, the JTM highlights the paradox at the heart of the EGD: while it aims to reconcile decarbonization with cohesion and competitiveness, it risks constraining the very democratic imagination needed for a transformative ecological shift. Whether the EU can move beyond a technocratic logic of optimization towards a genuinely participatory and justice-oriented transition remains an open and pressing question, one that will shape not only Europe’s climate trajectory, but also the legitimacy of its democratic project in the decades to come. For future research, the findings presented here may have broader relevance for understanding how depoliticization operates within complex governance architectures. Comparable patterns can be observed in other multilevel or post-national institutions, where technical expertise and consensus-oriented decision-making similarly delimit the space for political contention. Further inquiry, in this regard, may contribute to a more general theory of depoliticization in transnational governance, clarifying how institutional design and epistemic authority interact in shaping the visibility of conflict and the boundaries of democratic deliberation.