News from the European Commission 

Ursula von der Leyen was reelected as President of the European Commission by presenting her political priorities, outlined in Europe’s Choice, which balance the very different main requests from the different  EU political groupings. The guideline she proposes centers on reinforcing the unity and resilience of the European Union in the face of global uncertainties. The focus is on several key areas: security, economic prosperity and competitiveness, climate action, and social fairness. The Commission’s President emphasizes the need for collective action to address security threats, particularly by supporting Ukraine and enhancing defense capabilities through a stronger European Defense Union. Economic competitiveness is considered to be bolstered by advancing the digital and green transitions (these priorities of the last commission weren’t abandoned), fostering innovation, and simplifying the regulatory environment, particularly for SMEs. Additionally, the Commission aims to sustain social fairness by implementing the European Pillar of Social Rights, addressing the cost of living, and promoting job quality and skills development.

In parallel, the Commission highlights the importance of global leadership and strategic autonomy. This involves deepening partnerships, particularly in response to geopolitical challenges posed by Russia and China, and ensuring that Europe remains a key player in global economic and security matters. The approach includes completing the EU’s enlargement process for geopolitical reasons, enhancing relations with the Mediterranean region, and adopting a new economic foreign policy that prioritizes economic security, fair trade, and sustainable investment. The overarching goal is to strengthen Europe’s capacity to act decisively and cohesively on the world stage, while ensuring internal cohesion and prosperity.

The document does not mention the term “social economy”, but it does mention “cooperatives” once. It does addresses broadly social fairness, the social market economy, and related initiatives, such as the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights, (from which the Social Economy Action Plan derives).

For the connaisseurs, the social economy ecosystem is clearly a key element of Europe’s social model, aiming to ensure that economic activity is inclusive and benefits all members of society. It participates in improving job quality, fair wages, and social protections, (through provision of social services, access to health and social care in particular) and in relatively new fields such as digital transformation and new forms of work. Social Economy also participates in improving Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction through focused economic activities and its strong training provision, being a key actor for the upskilling and reskilling of professional competences to improve the employment and give security to the people in the face of changes and uncertainty. It also has a key role to play in highly politically and economically sensitive objectives such as Clean Industrial Deal or industrial autonomy (through production of goods and services, and particularly in terms of energy, food security,…).

In fact, social economy has innovative and democratic solutions to boost the green and digital transition, Circular Economy, Sustainable Production (of which key areas such as healthy food supply, water and nature preservation), energy, housing, social tech…  In fact, social economy is the only ecosystem capable of supporting the EU objective of protecting democracy, as it is the only one that embeds democratic practices at the heart of its principles; if there is no democratic or participatory practices within an association or enterprise, it is not social economy. And part of the democratic crisis the EU is facing, is due to the fact that mainstream economy under evaluates its social responsibility (not to mention the environmental one) and acts as if democracy is not its concern. But democracy cannot be solely considered as an elective process: in a truly democratic society, its practices should permeate to all institutions, including enterprises.

Social economy is a great ally for the new EU’s political guideline, in all points, even to support defense and security, as it can play a crucial role in education against fake news for instance and by providing space of dialogue against social divide. Social economy is an actor of peace, dialogue and solidarity. To make sure social economy supports a prosperous EU and the President’s objectives, it is important that the Social Economy Action Plan is further developed (as it has only began to unravel), that a Commissioner that has social economy in his or her portfolio supervises such cross-sectorial ecosystem and coherence of legal and political reforms, and last but not least, it is crucial that links remain with the European Parliament, thanks to the renewal of the Social Economy Intergroup.

Ursula von der Leyen has been re-elected as president of the European Commission just like Roberta Metsola as president of the European Parliament. António Costa has been elected as President of the European Council. The EP Committtees have been already constituted. Find all their info here.

Now that Member States have designated their candidates for the College of Commissioners, in the coming weeks von der Leyen will make her choices and submit them to the European Parliament. Following the political guidelines she drafted it seems as she will designate the following 10 portfolios (and more) : Defence; Implementation, Simplification, and Interinstitutional Relations;  Enlargement; Mediterranean ; Housing ; Vocational Education and Training (VET) ; Fisheries and Oceans ; Equality as well as Intergenerational Fairness. Who will have the Social Economy portfolio?

SEE Campaign updates

On July 18, an encounter between members of the European Parliament and social economy players took place at the City Hall of Strasbourg. With more than 70 attendees, it was a fruitful event co-organized by Strasbourg Eurometropole, CRESS Grand Est, ESS-France and Social Economy Europe with the aim to allow the recently elected MEPs to meet social economy actors. 4 MEPs: Maravillas Abadia (EPP), Idoia Mendia (S&D), Cynthia Ní Mhurchù (Renew) and Leoluca Orlando (Greens/EFA) participated in the event, all of them supported the renewal of the Social Economy Intergroup of the EU Parliament and explained their vision of the social economy and their role to promote it in this legislature.

The event also counted on the participation of the Mayor of Strasbourg, Jeanne Barseghian, Juan Antonio Pedreño, President of SEE, Benoît Hamon, President of ESS-France and Víctor Meseguer, Special Commissioner for Social Economy, Government of Spain.

News from projects

The baSE project is the Blueprint for advanced skills & trainings in the social economy (2022-2026). It aims at reinforcing the capacities of Social Economy and its human capital in key areas involving 25 partners from 10 European countries forming an alliance focused on skills mismatches for upskilling and reskilling of social economy practitioners contributing to developing a new strategic approach (Blueprint) to sectoral cooperation on the offer of skills for new or updated occupational profiles in the SE sector.

One of the outcomes of the project is the design of curricula and training courses for the ecosystem. The training catalogue is already available! Check it out here! The MOOCs based on this catalogue will be available soon. Stay tuned!  

The consortium starts the 3rd year of the project with a Face-to-Face meeting with all its partners on October 1st and 2nd in Athens. We will keep you posted! 

SEE is one of the partners of the project Inspire: Supporting the inclusion, wellbeing, and growth of rural areas through multi-actor Smart Villages labs for enhanced governance frameworks. It is a 3-years Horizon project whose main objective is to support sustainable and inclusive development of European rural areas by promoting social wellbeing and inclusion of rural dwellers and vulnerable groups. In particular, the project contributes to advancing in a multi-dimensional way the concept of social inclusion in rural areas, and supports the access to high-quality social services by rural citizens through a series of awareness raising, capacity-building, and pilot deployment activities that focus on social entrepreneurship in a set of 7 different pilot territories (e.g., coastal, rural, peri-urban, mountainous). To realise its objectives, the project provides a novel territorial typology of rural areas, sets up and operationalises “Smart Village labs”, and enhances governance frameworks and informed policy making through E-Democracy and user-innovation techniques, to eventually deliver a dedicated Rural Social Inclusion Policy Dashboard.

The kick-off meeting will take place on October 9 in Brussels. We will keep you posted about this exciting project! 

News from the global SE

On July 6, we celebrated the International day of Cooperatives. To commemorate this date, the ILO published a video message that recognises that cooperatives build a better future for all. The ILO also highlights that cooperatives are pivotal to addressing discrimination and inequalities and to promoting gender equality, to face complex challenges by providing people-centred solutions and promoting a just environmental transition and a fair digital transformation.

This is another step forward in the global recognition of Social Economy! Let´s remember that UN has already proclaimed 2025 as the International Year of Cooperatives 

On August 20, SEE President Juan Antonio Pedreño intervened online at the event organized by the Republic of Mexico entitled: The role of the Social and Solidarity Economy in Mexico´s international relations. The event which took place at the Senate of the the Republic in Mexico City had two different sessions: “The Social and Solidarity Economy as a development paradigm” and “The International Consensus of the Social and Solidarity Economy” in which Juan Antonio Pedreño intervened.

GSEF has opened a call for all SE stakeholders to participate in the 7th edition of the Global Social and Solidarity Economy Forum on October 29, 30 and 31, 2025 in Bordeaux, France. 

You can now propose your contributions around a central theme: “The SSE, a precondition for a fair transition towards resilient territories and the well-being of their inhabitants” 

The Forum’s Scientific Committee will receive your proposals for individual, collective or self-organized sessions until December 20, 2024 

More info: www.bordeauxgsef2025.org

Meet SEE´s new members!

The Microfinance Centre is a social finance network that promotes fairness, inclusion, equality and responsible service. It unites almost 140 organizations across 36 countries. Together with its members – microfinance, financial cooperative systems, social finance banks, social investors, academic institutions, national and international support organizations, and networks – Microfinance Centre seeks to make financial services work effectively for people, communities, and the planet by embracing sustainability good practices and standards, sharing knowledge, advocacy and networking in the region of Europe and Central Asia. 

Coompanion is a nation-wide network with 24 organizations all over Sweden and are gathered in a national office.

Coompanion is an expert organization in social economy development, in cooperative and social entrepreneurship. Its main objective is to provide information, advice and training to people who want to realize ideas together, from their first idea to a successful enterprise. Coompanion believes in democratic enterprises where all members work together and are engaged. For over 30 years, Coompanion has worked with the development of enterprises with social goals and is specialized in starting and developing social enterprises. Cooperation, to work together in companies owned by their members for common needs, has always been a way to meet challenges. Coompanion is also working with social and environmental innovation gathering the social economy around Sweden as well as collaborating with public and private actors.

Coompanion also initiates development projects with a focus on social economy in general and cooperation and entrepreneurship in particular. This often leads to seek development funds for implementation or to collaborate with a third party. Coompanion works to actively contribute to the development of the social economy.

Its business consultancy and development services are financed in part by Tillväxtverket (the Swedish Agency for Economical and Regional Growth) and are thus offered free of charge. Coompanion provides these services to those who plan to start and lead businesses together as well as those who want to solve a societal challenge through entrepreneurship, all leading to growth and innovation in the social economy in Sweden.

ASES (Social Economy Slovakia) is a national platform representing a wide range of actors in the social economy sector in Slovakia. ASES focus on creating job opportunities for disadvantaged groups, as well as on strategic planning and legislative initiatives, including successfully advocating for a reduced VAT rate for social enterprises. With over 200 members operating across all regions of Slovakia, ASES has extensive reach and deep knowledge of regional specifics. Its work involves close collaboration with public authorities, enabling us to effectively represent the interests of our members. ASES is actively involved in European projects and strategic documents that support the development of the social economy, and we provide individual support to its members, including the implementation of new projects to strengthen their sustainability. ASES look forward to our membership in SEE, which will be an opportunity for further development and collaboration. 

News from the Social Economy network

In order to recap all SEE´s activities and the achievements for the SE ecosystem in 2023, we have elaborated a wrap-up video that we played at our GA in Rome as a kind of visual Annual Report. The video is already available online. Check it here!

On August 1st, Alleanza delle Cooperative Italiane organised the seminar entitled “A European tax system for the social economy“, held at the Cooperation Palace in Rome, with the participation of Prof. Maurizio Leo, Italian Deputy Minister of Economy and Finance, Lucia Albano, Undersecretary of State to the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance, Juan Antonio Pedreño, President of Social Economy Europe, Prof. Gabriele Sepio and Prof. Livia Salvini. The introduction was handled by Giovanni Schiavone, President of AGCI and Co-President of Alleanza Cooperative Italiane, the coordination of the work by Simone Gamberini, President of Legacoop and Co-President of Alleanza Cooperative Italiane, and the closure was entrusted to Maurizio Gardini, President of Confcooperative and Co-President of Alleanza Cooperative Italiane.

During the event, both general and specific topics were discussed, such as the diversity of European social economies, the link between European taxation and the social economy and the national and international framework of cooperative taxation.

At the end of the meeting, the government representatives who attended confirmed their interest in establishing an effective collaboration with Alleanza Cooperative Italiane in order to define a dedicated tax policy for the social economy that takes into account the EU Recommendation by implementing the measures already present in the Italian legal system as already recognized at EU level. 

Exciting opportunity for Social Economy SMEs in energy-intensive sectors through the BRIDGE project. Its Open Call offers financial support of up to €8,000 to help businesses transition towards greener and more digital practices while adapting to the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. Applications until 1st October.
All the info: https://seebridge.infoproject.eu/project/open-call/

Rodrigo will be working for SEE with a one-year Erasmus+ internship. He will be supporting SEE director with members participation and policies.

“Hello everybody! My name is Rodrigo Alonso and this September I will have the pleasure to start an internship in SEE´s team. Recently, I have finished a master’s degree on Cooperativism and before that I completed the degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economy. I hope to contribute to European social economy as well as to get to know the social economy ecosystem and the different families that compounds it. I can´t wait to start to work for and learn from social economy! See you soon!” 

 Upcoming events

Today’s challenges are too big and complex for any single actor to take on. We need all hands on deck to address them effectively and efficiently. That means making the most of private, public and philanthropic resources. Philanthropic organisations could do even more if enabling frameworks and innovative tools were available as outlined in the Social Economy Action Plan.
Join us on the occasion of the European Day of Donors and Foundations for an early morning conversation on how policymakers can further stimulate impact investing activities of philanthropic organisations. Co-hosted by Philea at the European Parliament Info Hub on 1 October from 9 to 10.15 CET.

Info and registrations here

ENSIE invites you to Brussels for a series of upcoming events taking place on the 13th and 14th of November, to delve into the results achieved by our activities and projects. On Wednesday, 13th of November, we will present and discuss the results and achievements of the B-WISE project, focusing on the strategy developed by the project to boost skills for work integration. Moving on, Thursday, the 14th of November, will be dedicated to the BuyWISEly project, showcasing good practices and examples coming from successful partnerships between WISEs and mainstream businesses across Europe. Save the dates and join us!
Info on registration will follow. For more information, please contact antonio.contini@ensie.org