Social Economy

The aim of the partnership is to expand the activities of social economy, through interregional collaboration activities

Social Economy

The aim of the partnership is to stimulate cross-border operations for mutual and cooperatives to enable them to use the full potential of the internal market in order to expand the activities of social economy, through interregional collaboration activities. The partnership intends to deal with several challenges related to S3 and social economy such as, how to:
 
  • develop social economy clusters;
  • create European value chains of social economy enterprises belonging to different regions in Europe;
  • improve the cooperation between enterprises and other territorial actors, especially those who have technological and innovative competences.

The sector accounts for 2 million businesses, representing 10% of all European enterprises, and employ over 14 million paid employees (6.5% of the working population in the EU).

 The partership builds on other initiatives targeting:
 
  • existing fragmentation in social economy, implementing interregional social economy financing mechanisms that allow for sharing risks and facilitating access to financing  under favourable conditions and exploring shared use of machinery and infrastructures (DG GROW Pilot Action “European Social Economy Regions 2018”),
  • providing local actors with the necessary skills to generate and develop collaborative projects based on territorial potential (ETESS - INTERREG POCTEFA project with the participation of Navarra regiona, Basque Country and New Aquitaine),
  • sharing and exchanging best practices and experiences in the field of public policy to support social enterprises (Interreg Europe project “RaiSE with the participation of ERVET and Örebro region),
  • supporting joint solutions to challenges hindering the development of social economy, thus promoting new approaches to overcome a fragmented approach to policies supporting social economy (ESSI – European Support to Social Innovation financed by Horizon 2020 - Innosup with the participation of the following regional development agencies: ERVET from Italy, ADA from Turkey, KAINUUN ETU from Finland and IVACE from Spain).

Thematic working areas

The partnership is working in very concrete investment ideasm such as Financial Platform for the development of impact investing for the social Economy and Economy Busines School for European Social (EBSSE). The key components of the EBSSE are:
 
  • European integrated approach
  • Capacity building offer providing a European perspective / experience
  • Novel learning methods

EBSSE offers social entrepreneurs and other actors a unique and experimental European learning experience to create and enhance a positive impact on society and the environment.

List of regions involved

Contact details of the lead region

Mikel IRUJO
Delegation of the Government of Navarra to the EU

Contact details of DG REGIO

Related documents

Monitoring reports containing a management report and a progress report prepared by the lead regions are available here:
Monitoring report SocEcon July-December 2020
English
(284 KB - PDF)
Download 

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Industrial cooperation & smart recovery
This EWRC workshop will be an opportunity to meet regional experts who are putting in practice interregional cooperation in the frame of their S3, supporting industrial modernisation for a smart post-Covid recovery.

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