Brussels, 11/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament believes that it is now time to go beyond the 2012 Social Entrepreneurship Initiative to further support the growth of the social and solidarity-based economy with the introduction of a European trust mark for social entrepreneurship and giving companies holding this trust mark their own legal status.
This was the message delivered by MEPs on Thursday 10 September with their adoption in plenary session in Strasbourg of the report on social entrepreneurship and social innovation in combating unemployment. The report drafted by Veronica Lope Fontagné (EPP, Spain) was adopted by 494 votes to 91, with 23 abstentions.
It focuses on four priority areas. While the Parliament welcomes the reform of directives on public procurement (inclusion of social clauses and criteria to encourage inclusion and social innovation), it nonetheless deplores member states' failure to implement these reforms in full. It also regrets that the Commission strategy on a digital single market does not even mention the social and solidarity-based economy.
One of the most serious challenges for the growth of social entrepreneurship remains access to finance, whether public or private. Parliament proposes here that the Commission should raise the credit cap in the employment and social innovation initiative (EaSI) and points out that the state aid rules should not constitute an impediment for public funding to social and solidarity-based economy enterprises and social services. Parliament would also have liked the new European fund for strategic investments to have had more to say on the social and solidarity-based sector.
This sector remains somewhat neglected. Perhaps this is because it is not well known to the general public and perhaps is lacking in training and publicity. That, at least, is what Parliament supposes and it encourages member states to raise awareness of the social entrepreneurship model (teaching programmes and day release schemes, for example). The Commission and member states should gather and share more information on this type of economy.
Parliament supports “the idea that social and solidarity-based economy enterprises could form a specific company category with its own legal status, defined as having other objectives than simply profit for shareholders”. It calls on the Commission to bring forward a legal framework for such enterprises, “to be achieved by means of the European statute for cooperative societies, associations, foundations and mutual societies”. (Jan Kordys)