Our Work

Tackling the ongoing climate and environmental crises at the same time as we fight social injustice and inequalities have been SOLIDAR’s main political priorities since 2020 and are shaping our policy and advocacy work up to 2025. Together with our members and allies, we strive  to advance social justice through a socially just green transition in Europe and beyond, putting people and the planet at the core of the political agenda. In addition, we focus on four key priorities:

  • The climate and environmental emergency
  • Democracy, human rights, peace
  • The digital revolution
  • Gender equality and intersectionality

SOLIDAR believes that the transformation processes and drastic structural adjustments that are urgently needed to meet the climate and environmental emergencies, the digital revolution, the continued structural gender inequalities, and reoccurring social and economic crises must be implemented in such a way that they are mutually reinforcing. They have to be designed to take the needs and rights of affected communities, present and future, into consideration. Social and civil dialogue are essential processes to achieve democratic and meaningful participation. 

Amid these deep and overlapping crises, there is a need for further European and international cooperation to achieve sustainable and equal societies. The time is now to reinvent our social and economic development model, to create new, decent, and quality jobs, to focus on the well-being of people through the creation of a socio-ecological welfare state, to guarantee a healthy and vibrant civic space, to educate people as we transition into the future, and to counter the threats to our democracies and our planet. As a supra-national political organisation, the EU is the right actor at the right scale to achieve this. The EU has proven its ability to create change for the better, and how it addresses these challenges will define its credibility and leadership in Europe and beyond.

We advocate for social justice through a just green transition.

We bring our large network of members together to influence European and international policy-making. SOLIDAR voices our members’ concerns and their priorities at any relevant opportunity before European institutions and stakeholders, providing our members with the ability to shape the debate at the EU level and engage with its increasingly important decision-making. In so doing, we constitute a counterweight to authoritarian, nationalistic, and right-wing populist forces, as well as to conservative and neoliberal interests.

We build and share our expertise through capacity building for our members and partners.

We organise trainings, conferences, seminars and roundtables to fine-tune our knowledge and strengthen our role as experts in our key thematic areas. We provide support to our members related to EU decision-making processes, access to funding, and much more.

We foster alliances and dialogue to increase cooperation with our members and partners.

We create spaces of exchange for our members and partners to share best practices, knowledge, and expertise to advocate for a fair and sustainable Europe. We act as a bridge between political parties, civil society, and trade unions to facilitate dialogue and cooperation. This entails coordinating regular platforms of exchange between members and partners, identifying synergies between different members and partners’ activities, sharing resources and contacts, initiating joint action, and more.

FAQ

We regard just transition as a process that simultaneously tackles climate change, environmental degradation, and reduces existing inequalities, while guaranteeing access to fundamental rights to all. Based on the ILO guidelines (2015) this entails a whole-of-society approach, in which the current existential threat of rapidly evolving climate and environmental emergencies are dealt with in a holistic manner that advances our societies towards environmentally and socially sustainable ones. 

We regard social justice as the equal distribution of wealth, knowledge, income, and power within our global societies, ensured access to universal and quality social services, lifelong and life-wide learning, decent work, social protection, and a decent life for all expressed through a new social contract and in the form of a truly social citizenship.

Sustainability is the way in which we achieve social justice while respecting the planetary boundaries in an economic system that puts people and the planet first.