Europe occupies a contradictory position in the global climate landscape: it is both a historic driver of greenhouse gas emissions and home to some of the world’s most progressive climate policies. Yet, the region’s efforts remain far from sufficient to meet its fair share of climate action, despite being a wealthy region with the means to finance the transition. European Union’s ambitions under the Green Deal, the Fit for 55 package, and the Clean Industrial Deal, are being undermined by a growing backtracking and deregulation on climate policies, often under the banner of competitiveness and industrial strategy. As a result, the continent’s overall emissions trajectory remains on track for 2–3°C of warming — far above the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C.
Structural inequalities are increasing across and within European societies. Climate impacts — such as heatwaves, flooding, and food insecurity — are felt most acutely by underrepresented groups, including low-income households, racialized communities, migrants, women, youth, and people with disabilities. Climate measures themselves often reproduce inequality when poorly designed — for example, regressive energy taxes or green subsidies that benefit wealthier households and corporations. The wealthiest Europeans continue to increase their carbon footprints, while poorer communities struggle to adapt or be heard.
At the same time, civic space in Europe is under pressure. Climate activists face increasing repression, surveillance, and criminalization in several countries. The political debate around climate action has become polarized, exacerbated by industry lobbies, populist narratives, economic anxieties, and geopolitical tensions. This dynamic has weakened the sense of urgency for transformative action, particularly among those already skeptical of climate justice demands.
Europe remains rich in opportunities for systemic change. The region is home to dynamic movements connecting environmental goals with social, racial, and economic justice — from youth-led alliances and feminist groups to labor unions and grassroots coalitions. Oxfam-supported campaigns and the CAN Europe Mobilization Platform are building cross-border collaborations and fostering inclusive narratives through digital and local organizing. Participatory models like climate assemblies and citizen budgeting are gaining traction. Europe also holds strategic potential to influence global climate finance and equity debates, with civil society pushing for debt-free climate finance, corporate accountability, and alternative and more equitable economic frameworks. The current policy window — from Fit for 55 implementation to 2040 targets — presents a critical chance to embed justice, equity, and participation in Europe’s climate future.
Linking local action in Europe to global climate justice efforts is essential. The European Union and its Member States play a powerful role in shaping global climate negotiations, finance flows, trade regimes, and corporate regulation frameworks. Local struggles for climate justice across Europe, whether led by youth, migrants, workers, or grassroots coalitions—are part of a broader global movement for equitable climate action. We aim to strengthen these linkages by ensuring that local narratives, lessons, and demands inform international engagement efforts, particularly at the UNFCCC, COPs, and multilateral finance institutions. Through coordination with partners in the Global South and international networks like CAN, European actors can challenge unsustainable economic practices and push for adequate climate finance for mitigation, adaptation and responding to loss and damage in developing countries. This means holding the EU accountable not only for its domestic policies, but for its influence on global climate justice outcomes.
a) Strengthening Movements and Activism
Climate justice movements across Europe are navigating a paradoxical environment. While the region boasts some of the world’s most progressive environmental policies and a rich tradition of civic activism, it is also experiencing an alarming crackdown on dissent. Activists—particularly youth-led and intersectional groups—face increasing repression through legal restrictions, surveillance, criminalization, and shrinking public funding. This erosion of civic space is compounded by political and economic forces such as populism, austerity, and geopolitical instability, which are fuelling polarization and diminishing public trust in institutions.
Amid these challenges, many movements are undergoing renewal. Youth-led climate groups, which surged in recent years, are rebuilding after the pandemic, grappling with burnout, limited resources, and questions of long-term impact. They often lack the infrastructure and access needed to shape policy effectively.
Act for Climate Justice addresses these realities by investing in movement infrastructure, leadership, and cross-sector coordination, with a special focus on youth-led, feminist, and intersectional organizing. The program prioritizes deep, long-term partnerships, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, where civic space is most restricted, and supports alliance-building through trusted regional networks. It emphasizes activist wellbeing, offering mental health support, digital security, peer learning, mentorship, and political education, so young people can sustain their activism without compromising safety or livelihoods.
Act for Climate Justice also aims to strengthen movements’ narrative power and policy influence. It invests in youth-led storytelling to amplify voices often marginalized in climate debates—such as racialized, working-class, queer, and trans communities—making climate justice narratives more relatable and politically potent. It also supports grassroots engagement with policymaking at local, national, and EU levels, while defending civic freedoms and pushing back against disinformation. By promoting flexible, long-term funding and encouraging donor shifts toward trust-based practices, we seek to build a resilient, inclusive, and effective climate justice movement capable of advancing systemic change rooted in justice, equity, and care.
b) Mobilizing Climate Finance for Fair Climate Action
Europe’s role in climate finance remains fraught with contradictions. While advocating global ambition, the EU and its member states fall short of their fair share in financial contributions, particularly on adaptation and loss & damage. Domestic climate finance also fails to reach those most affected, while private sector actors often capture disproportionate resources.
Oxfam and allies work to challenge financial injustice by promoting the “polluters pay” principle, , advocating debt-free finance for adaptation and loss and damage, and linking financial justice to economic alternatives. Engagement also focus on increasing transparency in EU-private sector partnerships and seek to align European investments with global equity.
Key efforts include providing data around how climate finance is insufficiently reaching the most affected groups, , ensuring ambition and equity in bilateral and multilateral finance mechanisms (such as the Green Climate Fund) increases, and engaging publics and decisionmakers on how to generate new sources of public finance through green taxation, windfall profit taxes, and reallocation of harmful subsidies. Oxfam and CAN are engaging with the EU to increase both the quantity and quality of its international climate finance to become the genuine international climate leader it claims to be. This is a key lever for delivering global climate justice. Advocacy around European due diligence and ESG legislation complements this, aiming to regulate private sector actors profiting from extractive or harmful climate investments.
c) Supporting Local Adaptation to Build Resilience
Although climate adaptation plans exist at national and regional levels, including the EU’s NDC and Adaptation Strategy, implementation lags and often excludes underrepresented communities. Cities and municipalities are increasingly recognized as key actors in adaptation, particularly in addressing urban heat, food security, and social vulnerability.
We support participatory planning processes at local levels, elevate community-led adaptation examples (e.g., climate assemblies), and advocate for direct funding mechanisms to grassroots actors. This includes recognizing the unique vulnerabilities of youth, migrants, and low-income groups and promoting care-centered, feminist approaches to resilience. These efforts must be systematically included in climate plans and strategies of European countries and the EU.
Looking ahead, the forthcoming European Climate Adaptation Plan offers a major opportunity. It will support Member States on preparedness, planning, and science-based risk assessments, covering impacts on infrastructure, energy, water, food, and land in both urban and rural areas. It will also promote nature-based solutions. Coupled with the first European Climate Risk Assessment, this can lay the groundwork for future legislation — where Oxfam can help center justice and inclusion.
d) Advancing a Just Energy Transition
Europe’s energy transition risks being unjust if left to market forces. Wealthy households and corporations benefit most from subsidies and technologies, while working-class communities face rising costs and job insecurity. Fossil fuel dependency persists, with some countries reopening coal infrastructure or forming unjust gas deals. A feminist, people-powered just transition in Europe must include the regulation of corporate actors, end fossil subsidies, and ensure that new green jobs are accessible and rights-based. Youth, labor unions, and social movements are vital actors in this transition, working together to influence national plans and EU energy policies from a justice perspective.
Advocates are pushing for national and EU frameworks that guarantee social protection and labor rights, especially in carbon-intensive regions. Civil society is also monitoring hydrogen and bioenergy strategies to prevent new forms of extractivism and corporate monopolies under the guise of green innovation. This includes highlighting the false promise of large-scale bioenergy, which often causes negative global impacts such as increased global food insecurity and land grabbing in communities in the Global South. In addition, we must advance demand reduction strategies that target the wealthy, aiming to significantly reduce Europe’s final energy and material consumption. These strategies promote low-energy lifestyles, help curb emissions, and support a fairer, more sustainable transition without depleting natural resources or harming the environment.
A just transition also demands a fair approach to sourcing critical raw materials. Oxfam is actively engaged in civil society initiatives to ensure that Europe’s need for these materials does not reproduce extractivist harm in other parts of the world. This includes advocating for transparency, fair benefit-sharing, environmental safeguards, and labor rights throughout the green value chain. The demand for critical materials is only expected to grow in the current geopolitical context and rising militarization efforts, making it even more urgent to embed justice, accountability, and sustainability in raw material sourcing.