What is the JTF
The Just Transition Fund is a new financial instrument within the framework of cohesion policy, which aims to provide support to territories facing serious socio-economic challenges arising from the transition towards climate neutrality.
The Fund is aimed at ensuring that the achievement of the ambitious positive objectives undertaken as part of the European Green Deal, aimed at making the EU climate neutral by 2050, occurs fairly and leaves no one behind.
What does the JTF support and how is it invested
The JTF Fund supports Regions and territories through grants in the sectors that are considered most sensitive and exposed to the consequences of the transition towards climate neutrality, also due to their connection and dependence on fossil fuels including coal, peat and oil shale , and greenhouse gas-intensive industrial processes.
Access to the Fund is ensured through the definition, by the Member States, of the so-called Territorial Plans for a just transition (provided for by art. 11 of the EU Regulation 2021/1056. Within which all typologies must be provided of intervention necessary to face the challenges for the transition in the short and long term of a given territory, with a time horizon of 2030 and with particular attention to the economic diversification and modernization measures of the territories of interest, as well as to professional retraining measures and active inclusion of workers and job seekers.
The main investment sectors are those capable of having the greatest impact on the transformation of territories and their competitiveness and social, economic and environmental sustainability in the medium-long term. Among these: technologies for clean energy, the reduction of emissions, the recovery of industrial sites, the retraining of workers.
The JTF in Italy
In Annex D of the Country Report published as part of the 2020 European Semester, the European Commission has identified the territories hardest hit by the transition towards a climate-neutral economy in each Member State.
For Italy, the areas of the Province of Taranto and Sulcis Iglesiente have been indicated. The JTF investments for Italy are therefore concentrated in these two areas of the country through the creation of a National JTF Program whose Management Authority is headed by the Agency for Territorial Cohesion.
For each area, the relevant territorial plans are defined, provided for by the art. 11 of EU Regulation 2021/1056, designed in coherence with the Integrated Plan for Energy and Climate (PNIEC), which defines the Italian guidelines for decarbonising the economy and achieving climate neutrality by 2050.
Italy’s territorial plans and negotiations with the European Commission
To define the territorial plans, the European Commission started a process of close discussion with the stakeholders during 2021, led by the Department for Cohesion Policies and the Agency for Territorial Cohesion, aimed at identifying the intervention logic and highlight any coherent projects already present in the territories. The negotiation with the European Commission took place during 2022 and, after the sending of a first proposal transmitted on 20 June, it reached its conclusion with Decision C(2022) 9764 of 16 December 2022 for the approval of the National Program and the two territorial plans.
The Territorial Plans, designed with strong coherence and synergy with the regional programs financed by the ERDF and ESF+ funds and with other territorial programs (e.g. Piano Sulcis, CIS Taranto), contain a description of the transition process at national level, an assessment of the challenges to be addressed and the related social, economic and environmental effects and a description of the types of intervention to be financed.
Specifically, the challenges identified are focused on three main areas:
- Energy and environment
- Economic diversification
- Social and occupational effects.