Just Transition Fund
The Just Transition Fund is an instrument of the European Green Deal. 17.5 billion euros are to be made available to enable a socially just exit from coal mining. The money is to be used to give former coal regions a new future.
Thinking ecology and social justice together!
The Just Transition Fund (JTF) is the only program of the European Green Deal that thinks ecology and social justice together. 17.5 billion euros are available to facilitate a just transition to a sustainable and climate-neutral economy.
Europe should become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. To reduce our CO2 emissions to zero, we must radically transform our economy and say goodbye to fossil fuels. Especially to coal.
This transformation will be a major challenge for regions where the economy and way of life have been shaped by coal for more than a hundred years. The JTF’s main purpose is to give these coal regions a new future.
The money from the fund should help to restructure and diversify the local economy. The aim is to keep the regions well worth living in – together with the local people. This is why we Greens are particularly committed to make sure that
- local citizens are involved in funding decisions
- small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups benefit from the fund
- social and cultural projects can be funded, inclusive and gender-equitable
In the final trilogue negotiations in December 2020, we achieved a particularly great success: we prevented JTF funds from being used to promote climate-damaging natural gas projects!
