Central banks are promising a more climate-based focus on matters ranging from communication to prudential regulation and supervision, including monetary policy. The chapter examines the various arguments that analyze whether the European Central Bank (ECB) can tackle climate change, in light of its mandates. In our view, climate change fits within the narrower central bank mandates, focused on price stability, while other ‘peripheral’ mandates and ‘transversal’ environmental principles can play a supporting role. Prudential regulation and supervision can also be a main point for assimilation. Finally, we examine the considerations of courts of climate change when scrutinizing governmental action and compare them to the considerations of courts of ECB acts. We conclude that the integration of sustainability considerations, and especially climate change, into the ECB price stability mandate seems to be on relatively firm legal ground.

Sustainability transitions can be understood as the transformation of socio-technical systems towards the sustainable provision of societal functions. Socio-technical systems are held together by formal and informal rules, also called institutions. For sustainability transitions to materialise, the formal and informal rules of socio-technical systems need to change. Institutional change is often driven by coordinated collective efforts - typically in the form of coalitions - that mobilise actors, shape policies, and influence socio-technical environments to favour sustainable innovations. The chapter defines coalitions and related concepts such as alliances, social movements, and networks, and reviews their roles within established sustainability transition frameworks, including the multi-level perspective, technological innovation systems, strategic niche management, and transition management. The chapter also introduces theoretical strands that use different types of coalition concepts and discusses how they can be applied to sustainability transitions, and finally highlights valuable avenues for future coalition-related research in the field of sustainability transition studies.

Climate risks pose significant financial challenges that align with the stability mandates of central banks and supervisors. They can lead to economic losses impacting households, firms, and financial institutions, potentially threatening financial stability. Current supervisory efforts have focused on microprudential policies, with the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) establishing a comprehensive approach across the Basel Framework’s three pillars. However, the systemic nature of climate risks necessitates macroprudential responses as well. Like other systemic risks, climate risks are widespread in financial markets and can lead to amplified financial disruptions. However, unlike other systemic risks, climate risks are foreseeable and irreversible, although they are subject to uncertainty in timing and outcomes. This chapter argues that effective macroprudential measures, such as systemic capital buffers and concentration limits, can enhance resilience and mitigate future risks but require careful calibration to avoid adverse effects. Against this background, and given that immediate action is essential to prevent delayed responses that could exacerbate financial instability, central banks and supervisors could prioritize large institutions and high-risk sectors in initial implementations.

The hypothesis at the outset of this contribution is that the position of central banks as independent non-majoritarian institutions needs to be reconsidered to the extent that they actively engage in climate change mitigation activities. It is argued that greening monetary policy calls for a reassessment of the democratic legitimacy of central banks, where the constitutional position of central banks has been informed by the model of the conservative independent central banker and justified by the specificity of their mandate and the vulnerability of monetary policy to political tempering. This also applies to the European Central Bank, whereby the question arises whether climate change mitigation should be delegated to independent central banks in the first place and, if so, what the challenges are in securing their democratic legitimacy for engaging in such activities. It is argued that a clear task must be left for the democratic institutions to take the necessary political decisions and to undertake the necessary balancing of interests in making the distributional choices necessary to effectively address climate change. The latter must not be left to non-majoritarian institutions.

Chapter 2 outlines scholarship concerning the reaction of labour movements to European integration. The chapter commences with an examination of historic attempts by labour to respond to integration. Though political economists writing after the Maastricht Treaty emphasized processes of competition (Rhodes, 1998; Scharpf, 1999; Streeck, 1996), scholars who underline actor agency have focused upon initiatives which aim at cooperation; this literature examines European social dialogue (Falkner, 1998), unilateral efforts by unions to cooperate on a European scale (Erne, 2008) and Europeanization of social-democratic parties (Ladrech, 2000).Notwithstanding achievements of this scholarship, such work inadequately theorizes the manner in which labour competition and/or cooperation affect substantive conditions in labour markets. Research on dualization is therefore evaluated; this literature provides valuable insight into the relationship between labour behaviour and substantive change, though fails to conceptualize forces external to nation states (Emmenegger et al., 2012; Palier and Thelen, 2010). Controversies regarding labour movements and the broader trajectory of European integration are also introduced. The manner in which theories such as neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism aid understandings of labour movements is appraised, before it is asserted that the reaction of labour to the crisis provides rich material for reconsideration of prevailing approaches.

A final chapter sets out an argument about the role of labour in the process of European integration. Rather than facilitating Europeanization, as certain theories predict, relations between separate labour movements tend to be based on national interests and, within EMU, exploitative relations form between strong and weak. It is argued that such developments validate intergovernmentalist theories of European integration and, consistent with an emerging agenda which underlines the capacity of the EU to disintegrate, point to the ability of labour sectionalism to undermine the European project. An agenda for future research is also outlined, which encourages investigation into asymmetric relations between labour movements, the capacity of actors to prioritize competing goals and the manner in which non-state actors drive the (dis)integration process. Finally, it is stressed that the endurance of the EU is unequivocally in the interests of labour; the book ends with evaluation of ways in which the EU might be reformed so as to strengthen institutional grounds for labour cooperation.

France occupies an intermediate position in the Eurozone and its labour movement is one which is fragmented and adversarial. Lack of corporatist tradition means unions in France have historically experienced difficulties responding to external shocks (Crouch, 1993); the French case therefore raises the question of how unions in weak structural positions can effectively react to Europeanization. Following the introduction of EMU, this was partly resolved by a state incomes policy which limited potential loss of competitiveness; the role of unions in this process was nonetheless minor. The Eurozone crisis raised a further question of the French labour movement; namely the extent to which a movement in an intermediate country was likely to extend solidarity to counterparts in the periphery. Though mobilizations in France were more impressive than in core countries, significant protests being organized in France at key points, this response had limits and was a secondary priority for unions. The disposition of Parti Socialiste (PS) was also lukewarm. This was particularly the case on the right of the party; after François Hollande became president in 2012, the line of the German Government was increasingly followed.