Blog Articles

Last week the conference of the Luxembourg Presidency of the EU Council “Boosting social enterprises in Europe” took place. There were two sessions: one on social innovation as a key driver for economic sustainable development and another on financing social economy enterprises.

Magdas Hotel, set up by Caritas Austria in Vienna, was showcased as an example of social innovation. From chefs, to the kitchen, to migrants, people from 14 different nations with very different backgrounds work at Magdas Hotel. This hotel is unique, as it brings people from all over the world together: as guests, employees or friends. Gabriela, Magdas’s CEO, stressed that this hotel also employs refugees. In this way she challenged the general opinion that refugees are a cost, while – she said – they are in fact a resource.

In the panel on social innovation, Heather Roy from our memberEurodiaconia and former President of Social Platform, highlighted that social innovation is a process and not an end in itself. Its driver is the social need you are trying to give an answer. She identified the main barriers for social innovation in shifting from projects to policies with sustainable funding, as well as cooperation with different sectors that do not necessarily understand each other.

Ariane Rodert presented the opinion on the financial ecosystem for social economy enterprises of the European Economic Social Committee. I find this opinion excellent, as it clearly considers as a starting point the financial needs of social economy enterprises. This is also the main idea I expressed in the article I was kindly asked to write for this conference. I have followed the discussions on social enterprises and their financing here in Brussels for five and a half years, and I previously worked in the social economy in Italy for 13 years. Sometimes the feeling is that these discussions at EU level are disconnected from the reality and the real financial needs of social economy enterprises. They also tend to consider all social economy enterprises the same, while this term includes a universe of different legal forms that work in very different ways and therefore might also have different financial needs. In this article I stress that the financial needs of social economy enterprises that provide social services and other services of general interest are not at the centre of the EU discussions, which are mainly based on private finance instruments and neglect public authorities as an essential actor to be included in the discussions.

With this conference, the Minister for Employment and Social Economy of Luxembourg, Nicolas Schmit, wanted to give a clear political message; the EU should commit itself to strongly supporting the social economy that has weathered the economic crisis better than anything else. The so-called Luxembourg declaration was adopted at the end of the conference by representatives of the governments of Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, France, Slovenia and Slovakia; these countries want to make social economy one pillar of European economic development. Today, the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs (EPSCO) council will finally adopt Council conclusions on social economy. This is an important political message, and will be the topic of my blog next week.