Last edited: February 2025
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This section offers perspectives for facilitators of national platforms on how to integrate a Just Transition approach into their structures. It introduces national platforms and their role, analyses their main functions and suggests practical strategies for each of them to integrate the Just Transition approach in a cross-cutting way.
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A national platform is an organisational structure that brings together and mobilises multiple stakeholders from different levels of government (city, region, country) and other stakeholders from different sectors (public, private and third sector organisations, civil society and academia) working to solve a common complex challenge, in a stable and continuous interaction within the context of a specific country, with the political mandate and support of the higher institutions of that country.
In the current European context, national platforms tend to adopt key challenges proposed by EU missions, such as the Climate Neutral Cities Mission or the Climate Change Adaptation Mission.
Within a national platform, each organisation takes on specific roles, which may evolve over time. Key roles in a national platform include:
| Local governments | Local governments are often considered the “challenge owners”. Their main role is to identify and formulate the key challenges they want to address with the other stakeholders and to lead the planning and implementation of actions based on their local characteristics. These actions can be organised in portfolios, programmes, projects, initiatives, system demonstrators, etc. |
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| Other levels of government | Other levels of government, such as regional, national or supranational authorities, work with key stakeholders (e.g. local governments) to provide enhanced support. Their main role is to adapt and improve funding and financing instruments, design better policies and regulations, and provide technical expertise and capacity building initiatives to strengthen local efforts to address key challenges. |
| Community of multiple stakeholders | A community of multiple stakeholders (e.g. private sector, third sector, civil society, academia), also known as an “arena” or “ecosystem”, comes from different sectors, disciplines and specialisations that revolve around the core challenges, can influence or be influenced by them, and appropriate these challenges to work on them. The main role of these stakeholders is to collaborate with the challenge owners through knowledge and action to collectively solve the core challenges. |
| Intermediary structure | An intermediary structure often consists of a team of facilitators from one or more organisations working in partnership to support the platform stakeholders in their work on the key challenge. The main role of the intermediary structure is to facilitate the connection between the stakeholders of the platform through interaction and collaboration, to manage conflicts, to ensure the operational aspects of the platform and the collective construction and interpretation of knowledge. This structure is typically “neutral” or apolitical and has the legitimacy to act as a facilitator in many of the interactions between stakeholders. |
| Governance structure | A governance structure is often a group of experts, such as an advisory board, a directorate, thematic committees, etc. The main role of this governance structure is to provide strategic guidance to the platform as a whole, ensuring that it stays on track or adapts to new circumstances in order to address the key challenges. This governance structure can be adapted through the participation and representation of stakeholders who are part of the platform. |