Limitations of coordinative Europeanisation in the Just Transition Mechanism in Romania

Abstract

The EU currently promotes a radical transition towards a green, digital and more inclusive economy, which for its realization relies on the European Investor State’s financial architecture. As the transition generates losers, not only winners, instruments like the Just Transition Mechanism (JTM) are designed to provide a compensatory function. However, our research shows that it might miss its mark of ‘leaving no one behind’. JTM is a fascinating extension of European Investor State as it seeks to service the losers through investments rather than compensations. Firstly, JTM mirrors the vision of the InvestEU program and doubles down on industrial transformation and strategic investments that rely substantially on private sector involvement. Secondly, as a process, the JTM requires local stakeholder coordination and national institutional capacity – both of which can pose additional challenges to newer member states without enhancing local capabilities. Thirdly, based on the process design, much like other EU programs, JTM has a level of complexity that leaves beneficiaries highly reliant on technical assistance. As such, investment gaps in the newer member states might be extended, and not compressed by the current compensatory financial tools of the EU. Using an in-depth case study method, we develop a multi-dimensional evaluation of the Just Transition process in the most affected region of the Jiu Valley in Romania. Through an original local stakeholder mapping, we find that while the local and national authorities have the highest influence in determining the Just Transition process in Romania, they are also very much distrusted by other local actors. Our findings reveal that it is not just the often-cited weakness in institutional capacity, but also that of poor stakeholder consensus that impede the strategic planning and implementation of new EU investment tools at the level of targeted beneficiaries.

From Mining to Tourism: Assessing the Destination’s Image, as Revealed by Travel-Oriented Social Networks

“…Moreover, being often associated with long-term economic and social decay, the post-mining communities relying on tourism in their territorial reconversion have ab initio a big disadvantage to overcome: a bad reputation [14,15]. In this paper, we discuss three mining regions that consider tourism as an axis of post-mining development: (a) Jiu Valley, a coal basin in Romania where the four still active mines are scheduled to be closed by 2032 [16]; (b) La Louvière, in the Centre Region of Belgium, a "daughter of the Industrial Revolution" and once a coal production world leader until the closure of mining in the 70s [17]; and (c) Ștei, the city built in Romania between 1952 and 1956, by the orders of the Soviet dictator Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, to house the workforce from the nearby uranium mine, which was subsequently closed by the Romanian state in 1997 [18]. All three case studies belong to medium to poorly developed European regions (La Louvière-BE 32 Hainaut, Jiu Valley-RO 42 West, and Ștei-RO 11 Northwest), defined by a large heterogeneity (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/regions/statistics-illustrated, accessed on 5 July 2023); however, they are in different stages of their transition to other economic models, just as the assets on which their tourism development aspirations are based also differ.…”