Bridging decarbonization and labour market in sustainability transitions: policy integration and social dialogue in Belgium

Achieving sustainability within planetary boundaries requires substantial changes in how we produce and consume and this transformation will affect labour markets.

Over the past decade, Belgian federal and regional authorities have developed targets, scenarios, and plans to transition towards a low-carbon economy, aligned with European strategies and international agreements. Simultaneously, a core aim has been to increase employment rates and foster labour market opportunities. Integrating climate goals with work, employment, and broader social objectives is a key aspect of the concept of a just transition.

Policy and institutional developments during the last legislatures at EU and Belgian have attempted to increase the level of integration between climate policies and economic, employment and social policy sectors. This integration attempts build on various processes of concertation and participation of workers, companies and citizens through existing or new social dialogue institutions and fora.

While the focus of precedent work studying Belgian climate governance has focused on policy integration between government levels (Fermeglia, 2023; Happaerts, 2015), we attempt to understand if and how these recent developments have been able to provide policy integration across climate, employment, and social policy sectors.