The European Commission is expected to present on Thursday 9 December, in a communication to promote the social economy, a recommendation to converge national legal definitions, according to information gleaned on Monday 6 and Tuesday 7 December.
The institution would like to enable convergence of legal and policy frameworks between Member States. At present, there is already a political definition (Council Conclusions 2015), but not a legal definition at European level. The European Commission has limited powers to legislate, one source explained, but can accompany Member States in converging their national definitions.
As a reminder, this policy definition provides three criteria to define a social economy enterprise: - it is guided by the primacy of the individual and pursues a social objective that prevails over that of capital; - it has democratic (one person, one vote) and participatory governance; - it reinvests all of its profits.
The action plan should also address access to finance for these enterprises, notably through InvestEU, for which new financial instruments should be provided to support social economy enterprises. The Recovery and Resilience Plan is also cited as supporting this sector.
As such, a chapter will be dedicated to state aid for social economy enterprises. “It is a very sensitive issue”, a source told us, indicating that not all social economy enterprises have the same needs in terms of state aid, as do integration enterprises (e.g. those employing more than half of their staff with disabilities), which do not have the same degrees of profitability.
The European Commission is also expected to present guidelines on socially responsible public procurement, linked to the 2014 Public Procurement Directive. The institution, for its part, should commit to making greater use of social and environmental criteria in its own public procurement.
The Action Plan should promote the social economy at the international level through, inter alia, the Neighbourhood and Development Cooperation Instrument, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The European Union would strengthen its action in the dedicated UN working group.
According to our information, the French Presidency of the Council of the EU is expected to organise a European conference on the social and solidarity economy on 17 and 18 February. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)