The European Commission has released a report that looks at the potential of co-operatives to generate smart growth and jobs. The report presents the recommendations of the cooperative working group set up in 2013 by former Commissioner Antonio Tajani to assess the specific needs of co-operative enterprises with regard to a wide variety of issues.
Experts focused on three priority topics for co-operatives: entrepreneurship and education, financing and business support services. The group, which met four times between July 2013 and November 2014, is steered by Commission in coordination with Cooperatives Europe and includes representatives of all EU national co-operative federations as well as, European sectorial organisations and EU Commission officials from the DG Growth.
The report includes concrete recommendations for EU policymakers. In terms of co-operative entrepreneurship and education, it notes that the Commission’s Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan has a generic entrepreneurship education and management training approach that does not take into account the diversity of business models and how they operate. The working group recommends including co-operatives in school curricula, EU training programmes and recommendations to member states governments.
Co-operatives often struggle to access capital, particularly small and medium enterprises. The group therefore suggests improving access to financing for co-operative enterprises. It adds that The European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Investment Fund (EIF) should encourage local co-operative banks to play an increasing role as financial intermediaries for EU programmes. All national co-operative organisations should be able to create national co-operative development funds like in France, Italy or Spain, where every co-operative enterprise has to transfer a percentage of their net benefits, adds the report.
The document also recommends including the co-operative dimension into existing business support networks. This could help ensure that co-operative entrepreneurs have access to specific support services when starting a co-operative venture.
Both the Commission services and the cooperative associations taking part in the working group, concludes the documents, wish to keep this dialogue open by letting the workging group become a permanent one.
Dirk J. Lehnhoff, President of Cooperatives Europe said: "We are very pleased about this collaboration with the European Commission and about the first outcomes we have reached now. The setting up of this permanent working group and the release of the report show a real recognition of co-operatives as an economic actor in the EU. It is important now that those policy recommendations and concrete actions as outlined in the report will be taken into account in relevant current and future EU policies and programmes. The first step will be the circulation and the promotion of this document, for which co-operative organisations are ready to do their part besides the EU Commission”.
Europe is home to over 160,000 co-operative enterprises with 123m individual members. They provide jobs for 5.8m people. The full report is available online.
Photo: Dirk Lehnhoff, president of Cooperatives Europe
