The Social Situation Monitor (SSM) is the European Commission’s observatory of employment and social developments in the EU.

The Social Situation Monitor (SSM) team welcomes your abstract for an oral presentation at an SSM seminar that will take place in Brussels on 14 or 16 May 2019 (depending on speakers’ availability).

Focus of the seminar: Socially fair transition to a green economy

The recently published Reflection Paper “Towards a sustainable Europe by 2030” recognises that the transition to a low carbon/climate-neutral economy and society can have strong spill-over effects on social and employment outcomes and well-being. It can provide the foundation for decent jobs, and have notable health benefits.

However, traditional jobs might disappear or be transformed creating temporary frictions in the labour market and requiring significant reallocation of labour across sectors and regions.

Not only can these challenges hit the middle and lower-income households harder but the costs of investing in skills, energy efficiency and new forms of mobility, for example, can pose a higher burden on them as well.

Therefore we need to understand who and where are the most vulnerable in this transition, to develop policies which will ensure that support can be targeted as needed and no one is left behind.

The aim of the seminar will be to present and discuss the latest research on the issue of just transitions in Europe. More specifically, we are looking for presentations exploring, inter alia:

• Impact of the transition towards a low carbon/climate-neutral economy on employment, job quality, skills and tasks;
• Distributional impacts of the transition towards a low carbon/climate-neutral economy, including energy poverty;
• Synergies between social investment and environmental sustainability;
• Examples and best practices of just transition measures and policies, to ensure public support, including policy framing, packaging, sequencing or other relevant political economy aspects.

We welcome presentations of findings based on methods such as cost-benefit analysis, modelling exercises, and impact evaluations. The methods used should be shortly presented in the abstracts.

How to submit an abstract

Please submit your abstract electronically by Friday 15 March 2019.

Abstracts will be reviewed by the SSM team, which includes representatives from the European Commission, LSE Enterprise and ICF Consulting. Abstracts will be assessed based on their quality and relevance to the work of the SSM team.

Invited speakers will be given 20 minutes to present and 20 minutes to respond to questions from the audience. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered for one presenter per paper (in case of co-authored papers).

The SSM seminar series

SSM seminars are research seminars. Their aim is to provide a forum to discuss the theoretical, methodological and policy implications of the latest economic and social research. More specifically, SSM seminars aim to inform:

• The economic and social analysis of the European Commission in general, and the Commission’s Employment and Social Developments in Europe review in particular
• The economic and social analysis of the European Commission’s stakeholders
• The economic and social policies of the European Commission and its stakeholders.

SSM seminars are primarily intended to:

• Economists and analysts working in policy-making organisations
• Academic researchers
• Policy officers with an interest in economic and social analysis.

Click here for more information on previous SSM seminars. 

Contact

For more information about the call, please contact: 

Dr Arnaud Vaganay 
Email: a.vaganay@lse.ac.uk