A Participatory Future Scenario-Building Methodology for Europe’s Just Transition by Sectors: The FITTER-EU Case

The twin transition—green and digital—is a European Commission priority, but it raises concerns of misalignment and unequal impacts. While foresight approaches are increasingly used to inform policymaking, there is still limited methodological guidance on how to systematically integrate vulnerability into participatory scenario-building processes. Policies may unintentionally generate disadvantaged groups, making a just transition essential. The Fair and Inclusive Twin Transitions for a Stronger Social Europe (FITTER-EU) project develops a scenario-building methodology to anticipate socio-technical transformations across four sectors (housing and built environment, transport and mobility, energy, and agriculture) in six countries (Spain, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, and Portugal). The methodology employed combines a multi-level perspective (MLP), distinguishing between niches (emerging innovations), regimes (established systems), and landscapes (macro-level contexts), with the PESTLE analysis (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental). This MLP-PESTLE framework is operationalised as both a conceptual and analytical structure, supporting the design of exploratory scenarios grounded in expert evidence, collected through semi-structured interviews and a Delphi survey of policymakers, civil society representatives, researchers, and private sector experts. Findings highlight the methodology’s value for addressing unwanted impacts on societal groups, structuring the plurality of perspectives, and supporting its translation into three exploratory scenario configurations per sector (optimistic, neutral, pessimistic) by 2050. These scenarios represent alternative narratives of governance capacity, policy coherence, and social inclusion, reflecting different levels of achievement toward socio-technical transition objectives. This study contributes to the literature by providing a participatory methodological approach that integrates just transition considerations into foresight practices and tools for policymakers to foster anticipatory policymaking.