How Three European Regions Governed Economic Transitions: Lessons from Southeast North Brabant (NL), Cluj County (RO), and Basque Country (ES)

This report is an output of the BOLSTER project, which examines regions currently undergoing significant economic transformations due to the European Union’s policy to achieve a Just Transition—fostering the shift toward a carbon-neutral economy. The adoption of the Just Transition presents one of the toughest socio-economic dilemmas for European regions. On the one hand, these regions must restructure and scale down entire industrial sectors, diversify their economies, and ensure decent employment opportunities for workers and communities reliant on these industries. On the other hand, the transition must be done in a just way, ensuring that the most vulnerable populations are not disproportionately impacted. This necessarily requires the inclusion of diverse population groups in the governance of the transition process.

In this report, we focus on the former challenge: how to govern the economic transition while ensuring people retain jobs and maintain their quality of life. Governments alone cannot manage such a substantial shift and therefore urgently seek successful strategies to bring together relevant actors and create a strong governance coalition to support economic diversification.

This project contributes to that effort by studying three regions that have experienced transitions similar to those currently faced by Just Transition regions: Southeast North Brabant (NL), Cluj County (RO), and the Basque Country (ES). The guiding research questions are as follows:
• What do governance networks in economically successful transition regions look like?
• What socio-spatial implications do these transitions bring? Or, to what extent do governance processes of transition transform social structures and urban spaces?

This report is intended for policymakers and other stakeholders involved in the implementation of regional transitions. It offers practical insights designed to inspire and inform actors working on the ground, highlighting best practices from each of the three regions, along with key challenges and potential negative implications.