| dc.description.abstract | The European Green Deal, a set of measures put forward by the von der Leyen Commission at the beginning of its term in December 2019, has the ambitious and overarching goal of enabling the EU to become carbon neutral by 2050. Encompassing a wide range of developments in many cross-cutting EU policies, the decarbonisation of the EU economy will require a radical transformation of the EU energy system. This process has been already in motion for the last two decades. At the same time, it poses a great challenge from the social perspective in ensuring fairness and justice for the parts of the EU population directly affected by the process. From those two angles, the issue of energy poverty, still prevalent and affecting a considerable amount of the EU population, is very relevant. Its effective mitigation represents a precondition for achieving a just and fair energy transition. Developed in three main parts, this chapter explores the steps taken so far by the EU institutions to address energy poverty while identifying the policy and regulatory gaps and inefficiencies. Exploring energy poverty through the wider lenses of energy justice and based on the analysis of scientific literature, EU official documents and empirical data, this Chapter aims at showcasing the importance of placing energy poverty alleviation at the heart of all energy-related EU policies. | en |