Article Recma

L’économie populaire et solidaire en Equateur : vers la matérialisation du principe constitutionnel du bien-vivre ?

L’histoire économique et politique de chaque pays constitue un facteur déterminant du développement de l’économie sociale et solidaire (ESS). En Equateur, où sa version locale, l’économie populaire, a longtemps joué un rôle essentiel dans la subsistance des groupes les plus fragiles, l’Etat a entrepris un processus inédit en intégrant constitutionnellement l’économie populaire et solidaire (EPS) dans la transformation de son modèle économique. Prônant le principe du « bien-vivre » comme une alternative au développement occidental, le pays a fait le choix de promouvoir l’EPS comme l’un des principaux outils pour cristalliser son nouveau projet national. L’Equateur a créé un dispositif fort intéressant pour l’institutionnalisation de l’EPS et mène des actions concrètes qui méritent d’être diffusées afin d’approfondir les réflexions sur la place de l’EPS dans les politiques publiques des pays latino-américains.

Numéro de revue: 
337
Année de publication: 
2015
Auteur(s): 
Diana Sarrade Cobos

Cooperatives in France: Issues and challenges at the start of the 21st century

Conceived by Coop FR and the editorial team of Recma, this special issue of Recma in English presents French cooperatives today. We wanted to provide a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary picture of the French cooperative movement through six contributions on the following topics: an overview of the French cooperative sector today (Caroline Naett), the debate about the boundaries of the cooperative movement (Chrystel Giraud-Dumaire), socio-economics and the relationship between cooperatives and regions (Jean-François Draperi and Cécile Le Corroller), a comparative analysis of the organisations representing cooperatives in France, the United Kingdom and Italy (Enzo Pezzini), the history of French cooperative legislation (Loïc Seeberger) and, lastly, cooperatives in the social economy based on the legislation of July 2014 on the social and solidarity economy (David Hiez).

Caroline Naett’s article examines the contribution of cooperatives to the new French law on the social and solidarity economy and reveals the vitality of the French cooperative movement. Reminding us of the sector’s strength – 23,000 cooperative enterprises with over a million employees and 24.4 million members – she shows that the cooperative movement’s proactive involvement in the consultation process led the minister in charge to take into account the core of the movement’s recommendations. The movement’s proposals were mainly aimed at reaffirming cooperative identity.
This point is worth stressing at a time when economic and regulatory pressures and, consequently, statutory changes are challenging cooperative principles and justify the work of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) on revising the seven cooperative principles.
Chrystel Giraud-Dumaire presents the issues involved in measuring cooperatives statistically. In France, this debate is rooted in the work that the Association pour le développement de la documentation de l’économie sociale (ADDES) has been pursuing since its creation in 1982 to “determine the exact impact of the social economy”. The debate has intensified and
shifted over the past ten years, reflecting the interest sparked by the social and solidarity economy (SSE). On one side of the debate is what could be called the dominant argument of the SSE as put forward by the Observatoire national de l’économie sociale et solidaire (ONESS), and on the other side is the argument of cooperatives strictly speaking as advanced by Coop FR, one of the major institutional intermediaries. This debate has both theory implications – it divides the research community – and policy implications – as so much of the data published by the two sides differs. The figures in  the Atlas de l’ESS by ONESS and Coop FR’s figures can vary by as much as threefold. This debate is related to a question that arises in France, as elsewhere, insofar as the consolidated figures for the cooperative movement are none other than the ICA’s. The author discusses both the disagreements and the progress made in this still ongoing debate. Extracts from the “Sectoral
panorama of cooperative enterprises”, providing key figures on cooperatives in France, round off the analysis.
Expanding on the context set by those two contributions, the article by Jean-François Draperi and Cécile Le Corroller presents a cooperative socio-economics based on an examination of the relationships between cooperatives and regions. Distinguishing the situation of large and small
cooperatives as well as a range of regional identities, the authors highlight specific and complex relationships. In general, small cooperatives are very broadly a reflection of the regions where they were started while large cooperatives construct their own regional identities. In both cases,
cooperatives develop original ways of behaving in terms of the geographical space. Based on these observations, the authors propose a typology of five cooperative regions in which cooperation is 1) rather rooted in tradition; 2) integrated in the dominant economy; 3) serving the public interest; 4) concerned with identity and alternative principles; or 5) multi-stakeholder and inter-cooperative. These types are the many expressions of an original socio-economic development project in the geographical milieu.
The article by Enzo Pezzini widens the scope of investigation to the European level in his examination of the organisation of cooperative federations in France, the United Kingdom and Italy. This comparative study provides an opportunity to present the cooperative sector within both these three countries and the European context. The author identifies three organisational models as “sectoral” in France, “cross-sectoral” in the United Kingdom, and “integrated” in Italy, and shows that this diversity presents a challenge for the European cooperative movement, in particular in dealing with powerful lobby groups. The cooperative movement needs to speak with a single voice and move beyond the sectoral model that shapes
cooperative representation on the European level. This change, the author concludes, is fundamentally a question of political will.
To best understand the contemporary evolution of cooperatives, we feel the reader should have an overview of the evolution of French cooperative law. Starting from the first relevant legislation, the Companies Act of 24 July 1867, until the general law on cooperatives of 10 September 1947, Loïc Seeberger’s historical survey captures the complexity of cooperative legislation. Looking back at the past reveals how the different forms of French cooperatives have been established in company law with the exception of agricultural cooperatives, which are a special category under separate
legislation. The author also highlights the importance of the Act of 2014 on the social and solidarity economy. The scope of that legislation extends beyond cooperatives. The originators of the term “social economy”, the French cooperative movement is a major player in the SSE, while the legislation increasingly defines the political framework for the movement’s expression. Defining the SSE is an endless debate to which the legislation clearly provides a new context.
David Hiez looks at this whole vast law – around a hundred articles and eighty pages long – on the social and solidarity economy, which was passed on 31 July 2014. According to the author, the legislation reflects the return of government support for the SSE. This support takes various forms including financial measures, the strengthening of the SSE’s traditional mechanisms, the possibility of partnerships, improving legal certainty, etc. This is thus an ambitious and important piece of legislation that organisations can embrace
wholeheartedly.
French cooperatives are probably at a turning point in their two-hundred year history. With greater consolidation, particularly in agriculture and food processing, the growth of worker cooperatives (sociétés coopératives et participatives, or SCOPs), artisanal cooperatives (cooperatives artisanales),
business and employment cooperatives (coopératives d’activités et d’emploi, or CAEs) and community-interest cooperatives (sociétés coopératives d’intérêt collectif, or SCICs), and the resurgence of the consumer cooperative
movement, the debates concerning cooperatives reveal more than ever the pressures they face and their determination to promote collective, free, democratic and socially responsible entrepreneurship. There is certainly no shortage of pitfalls. However, as demonstrated by the resistance of the Cooperative Wholesale Society in Manchester to the attempted hostile takeover between 1997 and 1999 (see Graham Melmoth’s article in Recma, no. 271, January 1999), the commitment of cooperative members is the guarantee of a cooperative future. Greater participation in general assemblies and the refocusing of large cooperatives, including those in the banking sector, on
fundamental values indicate that the phase of degeneration and probably demutualisation may be over. Through the combined work of researchers and practitioners, let us make the cooperative movement capable not only of resisting the dominant economic model but also of sharing its choices with an ever-growing number of men and women.
I hope you enjoy this special issue.

Numéro de revue: 
0
Année de publication: 
2015
Auteur(s): 
Jean-François Draperi

A benevolent legal look at the Social and Solidarity Economy Act

The law passed last July was presented as a major piece of legislation that would reinvigorate and restructure the social and solidarity economy. Apart from official statements, reactions to the law have been guarded or critical. These reservations mirror the expectations that the law generated, expectations that a lawyer might consider unrealistic. The law does not appear to be fundamentally different from its counterparts in Spain and Quebec at least in its organisational aspects. In the French context, however, the law is a departure from the previous law in 1992, which had comparable ambitions. Besides the influence of the issues raised by the solidarity economy and social enterprises, the law features fewer attractions for capitalist mechanisms and reaffirms and strengthens principles that are more specific to the social and solidarity economy.

Numéro de revue: 
0
Année de publication: 
2015
Auteur(s): 
David Hiez

History of the evolution of cooperative law from its origins to the present day

To understand the history of cooperative legislation, it is helpful to look at some milestones in its development. Two important markers shape its evolution: the law of 24 July 1867 which recognised, although only indirectly, the existence of cooperative societies, and the legislative framework of the law of 10 September 1947, which defined the legal form and gave it its full legal identity. The slow genesis of a law specific to cooperatives began with the first attempts at forming cooperatives and culminated with the lasting consolidation of cooperative legislation. However, the rooting of particular clauses in the body of French law led to the specification of a unique statute of which the law on the social and solidarity economy, witch was voted on this summer, is an obvious example.

Numéro de revue: 
0
Année de publication: 
2015
Auteur(s): 
Loïc Seeberger

The organisational diversity of cooperative federations: A challenge for the EU

The cooperative movement in Europe plays a very significant role in reality but has a weak collective identity and lacks political clout. This situation is largely the result of how the movement’s representative organisations have evolved in individual European countries. They have developed in very different ways, mixing and promoting sector and cross-sector organisations depending on the case. Briefly examining three national experiences, we identify the different models and their evolutions. These national analyses help us compare the way representative organisations have developed and determine possible future directions for representing cooperatives at the European level.

Numéro de revue: 
0
Année de publication: 
2015
Auteur(s): 
Enzo Pezzini

Cooperatives and regions in France: Specific and complex relationships

This article looks at the relationship between cooperatives and regions. After presenting some aspects of the transformation of cooperatives and the possible impact on the relationship with their region, the article draws on a qualitative survey conducted in autumn 2013 and winter 2014 of some fifty cooperatives in ten French regions. We then present a series of factors of regional embeddedness: increase in participation in a cooperative, cooperative education, investment in real estate and, in the big cooperative groups, savings on transaction costs and containing agency costs. The article puts the history of these changes into perspective and proposes five types of cooperative regions that define the contours of a cross-cooperative meso-republic.

Numéro de revue: 
0
Année de publication: 
2015
Auteur(s): 
Jean-François Draperi et Cécile Le Corroller

The problem of cooperative boundaries: History, considerations and constraints

For more than 20 years, the French cooperative movement has worked on the definition of its economic boundaries, an essential problem for cooperative enterprises. As a satellite account of the social and solidarity-based economy (SSE) does not exist, it organised itself together with public authorities and the players of the SSE in view of defining “extended” boundaries, which take into account the “cooperative core” and the subsidiaries of cooperatives. The cooperative movement is confronted with diverging views on the definition of this economic boundary by the Observatoire national de l’ESS (National SSE Observatory), which engages in the collection of statistics and measurement as well as the observation of the social and solidarity-based economy. This article retraces the major periods of and the background to the establishment of the cooperative boundaries as defined by Coop FR, the organisation representing the French cooperative movement. It also proposes ways to progress towards a better visibility of SSE enterprises and cooperatives in particular.

Numéro de revue: 
0
Année de publication: 
2015
Auteur(s): 
Chrystel Giraud-Dumaire

The making of the Social and Solidarity Act from the cooperative perspective

The Social and Solidarity Economy Act passed on 31 July 2014 has a large component on cooperatives. While cooperatives are responsible for many of the measures that concern them, several are the result of ministerial decisions and have led cooperatives to change their positions. This article retraces the lively internal debates that cooperatives had during the process of drafting the bill as well as their expectations about what should happen next.

Numéro de revue: 
0
Année de publication: 
2015
Auteur(s): 
Caroline Naett

Associations et financements publics

Depuis une dizaine d'années, le champ associatif fait l'objet d'un questionnement quantitatif de plus en plus précis, mais demeure encore largement méconnu. Le grand intérêt de cet article est donc de présenter des données inédites concernant la répartition des financements publics entre les associations.
Les différentes formes que peuvent prendre ces financements publics — subventions, remboursements ou achats de prestations — sont explicitées et appréhendées tant au niveau local que national. Concluant que les associations sont des acteurs essentiels à l'échelon local, l'auteur y montre notamment que le financement public demeure marginal pour la plupart des associations ; qu'il est extrêmement concentré sur un petit nombre d'associations (6 des associations reçoivent 84 des financements publics) ; que les associations sanitaires et sociales en captent plus de la moitié ; que les associations sans salariés perçoivent des financements essentiellement municipaux.

Numéro de revue: 
258
Année de publication: 
1995
Auteur(s): 
Viviane Tchernonog

Le mochav classique et ses départements en Israël

Un mochav est un village coopératif à fonctions multiples, qui n’existe qu’en Israël et dont le fonctionnement comptable et fi nancier présente une particularité liée à l’existence de diff érents départements. Jusqu’ici très peu étudié, ce modèle a pourtant des caractéristiques spécifiques, que nous entendons décrire. Le présent article revient sur le fonctionnement du mochav et souligne comment les exercices fi nanciers annuels des départements ne montrent ni excédents ni pertes, à l’inverse de ceux de nombreuses coopératives dans le monde, qui terminent leur exercice annuel soit avec d’importants excédents budgétaires non redistribués aux membres, soit avec des pertes couvertes par les réserves de la coopérative ou par ses bénéfi ces non répartis. Enfi n, l’article expose le cas d’un mochav israélien dans lequel la situation fi nancière de chaque département repose sur la participation des membres à son activité économique, puis nous nous interrogerons sur le caractère équitable de ce mode de fonctionnement.

Numéro de revue: 
336
Année de publication: 
2015
Auteur(s): 
Zvi Galor