Przegląd Europejski 4/2022

The leading themes of the issue are: gender equality and social innovation; EU cohesion policy; and research, education, and development.

The first theme is addressed in a theoretical article analysing the importance of gender equality in the context of implementing social innovation and sustainable development principles. EU cohesion policy is the subject of several articles. In one of them, the author analysed the role of European cohesion policy in counteracting the negative effects of climate change, trying to answer the question of whether a fair transition towards climate neutrality is possible. The results of the study suggest that climate change mitigation has been among the priorities of EU cohesion policy since 2014. The study confirmed that EU funds are an important source of climate-related investment in Poland and that cohesion policy principles and instruments can, if used appropriately, contribute to a fairer “green transition”.

The article related to research, education, and development presents the results of analyses of the dynamics of educational potential and its relation to labour market development. The authors looked at the impact of the educational potential of the working population on the development of regional markets in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). They considered Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The results of the study indicated: insufficient responsiveness of local markets to changes in the structure of educational potential and the level of fixed asset investment; strong state regulation of the unemployment rate in the former post-socialist countries (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia); complex interrelationships between labour productivity growth rates, average wages, changes in educational potential and unemployment rates; significant influence of the regional environment on the socio-economic processes taking place in individual regions.