Policy Brief n°4 - Generating a just and green transition Aligning innovation and competitiveness policies in Europe with sustainability priorities

Key Messages

• Competitive sustainability requires systemic change. Innovation, productivity, and growth must be redefined with sustainability and equity as structuring principles, not side-constraints.
• Policy mixes remain fragmented. While references to sustainability are widespread, science, technology, and innovation policies often lack coherence between green goals and instruments for innovation, capability-building, and inclusion.
• Robust, integrated databases are a prerequisite for evidence-based policymaking. Tracking and comparing policy mixes over time helps to monitor and adjust their design in response to sustainability goals.
• Green technologies raise productivity, but the gains are unevenly distributed across regions and over time. Those gains depend on technological and scientific capabilities part of the local innovation ecosystem, and must be designed to advance, not undermine, social justice objectives.
• Sustainability must be addressed along value chains. Environmental and social costs are often externalised in global production systems; upgrading global value chains is key to fair and consistent competitiveness.
• Transformation is not technology-led alone. It requires long-term investment in human and institutional capabilities, inclusive governance, and coherent frameworks linking innovation with labour, education, trade, and environmental policies.