European Parliament Recommends Creating EU-Wide Social Enterprise Legal Status
Belle synthèse et réflexion que partage Jospeh Liptrap sur la mise en place d’un modèle d’entreprise sociale à l’échelle européenne : « European Parliament Recommends Creating EU-Wide Social Entreprise Legal Status -A Misstep? ». Ce texte est disponible sur l’Oxford Business Law Blog.
Extrait :
Compared with previous vertical attempts to bore through Member States’ “armour of sovereignty” by introducing supranational organisational forms, the Parliament’s suggested solution represents a cautious departure in approach. Exacerbated by the implications of Brexit, this may stem from a climate of general hostility to new initiatives in areas where there have been calls for redistributing matters dealt with by the EU back to Member States. Similar to the Societas Unius Personae directive following the failure of the European private company project, the proposal would take the shape of a directive introducing partially harmonised rules. It would only concentrate on the “core” elements of social enterprises, leaving other aspects of regulation to the national law of each Member State. The legal status would be voluntarily conferrable on any private law entity. To be eligible, an interested firm would be required to include within its articles of association certain express provisions:
- it must have a social purpose;
- it must engage in a socially useful activity (e.g. work integration to combat labour market exclusion);
- it must be subject to at least a partial constraint on profit distribution and have specific rules on the allocation of profits, with some profits made reinvested to achieve its social purpose;
- its governance model must democratically involve stakeholders affected by its activities; and
- it must incur extra reporting obligations.
The “European Social Enterprise” (ESE) legal status would be valid and recognised in all Member States, also extending to a certification label for social enterprises’ products.
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