This Essential Brief distils the key findings of the extensive report “A Pathway to Europe’s Competitiveness: The Clean Transition”, which highlights evidence-informed enablers to strengthen long-term competitiveness while delivering on the EU climate and environment ambitions. It focuses on key transition areas, including climate action, clean energy, circular economy, mobility, food systems, biodiversity protection and zero-pollution ambition. The report emphasises the enabling role of innovation in accelerating the uptake of clean technologies and examines the implications of global supply-chain vulnerabilities and critical raw materials dependencies. Finally, the report identifies a set of cross-cutting enabling conditions necessary to support transformative change across sectors and governance levels. These include the mobilisation of private and public investments, strengthened research and innovation ecosystems, education and skills development, improved monitoring and data systems, enhanced policy coherence across domains and governance levels, climate adaptation and resilience, communication and societal engagement, and the advancement of fair and inclusive clean transition. These horizontal dimensions are presented as foundational conditions for enabling coordinated implementation of a sustainable competitiveness, towards a prosperous and climate-neutral economy.

MARELLI Luisa;  TRANE Matteo;  BORCHARDT Steve;  GASTALDI Chiara;  GUERREIRO MIGUEL Mecia;  DELGADO CALLICÓ Laia;  ACS Szvetlana;  GEORGAKAKI Aliki;  SEIGNEUR Isabelle;  M'BAREK Robert;  BELTRAN MIRALLES Manuel; 

2026-06-16

Publications Office of the European Union

JRC147034

978-92-68-39945-3 (online),    978-92-68-39954-5 (print),   

1831-9424 (online),    1018-5593 (print),   

EUR 40732,    OP KJ-01-26-231-EN-N (online),    OP KJ-01-26-231-EN-C (print),   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC147034,   

10.2760/3785888 (online),    10.2760/6321782 (print),