Varieties of Ecosocial Policies in the EU: The Case of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans

Abstract

The ecosocial policy integration, required to address the intertwined social and ecological challenges of climate change, has been central to the European Union's Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), which was launched to tackle the social and economic impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic while simultaneously supporting the green and digital transitions outlined in the European Green Deal. Drawing on the growing eco‐welfare debate, our contribution first examines how the 27 national plans implementing the RRF integrate social and environmental measures. It then explores the drivers behind different patterns of ecosocial policy integration in three countries which show different levels of ecosocial policy integration: Italy (high), Poland (medium), and Germany (low). Our findings show that institutional factors have been key in shaping national ecosocial policy mixes, driven in the Italian case by a strong governmental will to comply with the EU ecosocial guidelines, whereas in Poland and especially in Germany the absence of ecosocial policy legacies and the limited involvement of pro‐ecosocial societal actors have limited the effective integration of social and ecological measures.