Policy Lab at the First CEE Degrowth Conference in Kraków

Policy Lab participated in the conference Degrowth: Bridging Green & Just in Central and Eastern Europe, held in Kraków, Poland, from 16 to 19 June 2026. The conference brought together researchers, activists, civil society actors, policymakers, organisers and practitioners working on degrowth, just transition and alternative economic models in Central and Eastern Europe.

For Policy Lab, the conference was an important moment for strengthening regional conversations on how degrowth can move from critique and theory towards political organisation, alliance-building and long-term transformative capacity.

Policy Lab contributed to the programme in three different sessions.

Ajda Pistotnik presented “Movement-Building and Transformative Learning in Central and Eastern Europe”, together with Mladen Domazet from the Institute for Political Ecology (IPE) in Zagreb, whom she invited to join the session. The presentation reflected on the role of Policy Lab’s Degrowth International Political School and IPE’s Green Academy as spaces for political education, alliance-building and collective agency.

Ajda’s contribution addressed a question that was present throughout the conference, but rarely tackled directly: how can degrowth move from community into a movement with the capacity to act politicaly?

Rather than focusing only on what degrowth means as a theory or policy framework, the presentation examined the infrastructures needed to sustain political work over time.

One of the key messages of the presentation was:

“Movement-building requires more than agreement around common concepts. It requires durable relationships, trust, shared political language, strategic thinking and spaces where people can learn together across organisations, sectors and countries.”

This made the contribution distinctive within the conference programme. While many sessions explored degrowth in relation to specific policy fields, sectors or theoretical debates, Ajda and Mladen focused on the organisational question behind all of them: what kinds of spaces, practices and institutions are needed if degrowth is to become a real political force in Central and Eastern Europe?

Ajda later joined the fishbowl discussion “Unlikely & Urgent Alliances”, where these questions continued in a more open and participatory format. The discussion explored how alliances can be built across movements, institutions, public administration, civil society, academia and local communities — especially between actors who may not share the same political language, but face common pressures from climate breakdown, social inequality and democratic erosion.

In this sense, Ajda’s two contributions were closely connected. The presentation offered a reflection on political schools as infrastructures of movement-building, while the fishbowl discussion opened the question of how broader alliances can be formed in practice.

On the first day, Blaž Kosovel presented “Bullshit Jobs and the Degrowth Critique of Modern Work”, revisiting David Graeber’s critique of socially meaningless work through a degrowth lens. His contribution opened up questions about the organisation of work in growth-oriented economies, the expansion of jobs that do not meaningfully contribute to social well-being, and the need to rethink work beyond productivity, employment for employment’s sake and economic growth.

For Policy Lab, one of the central lessons of the conference was clear: the challenge ahead is not only to produce better critiques of growth. It is to build the political capacity needed to act on them.

Policy Lab will continue to work on strengthening regional degrowth and post-growth infrastructures through political education, research, public debate and alliance-building. The experience in Kraków confirmed once again that transformative politics requires more than good ideas. It requires spaces where people can meet, learn, disagree, build trust and organise together.

Movement building is relational — and it needs durable infrastructures of collaboration.