Social Economy as a model in the international arena
Usually qualified as an international organization sui generis, the European Union has one of its distinguishing and most attractive features in the European Social Model, as opposed to those of the world’s other developed nations. Within this paradigm, the Social Economy (SE), by combining profitability with solidarity, creating high-quality jobs, strengthening social, economic and regional cohesion and promoting active citizenship, is one of the most innovative element supported by EU at global level. The attention paid to the SE by the different EU authorities has been growing over the last three decades: the important role of the SE in the social and economic development of Europe, including its position as a cornerstone of the European Social Model, has progressively been gaining recognition. In particular, 2011 saw an important shift in EU political agenda regarding the social economy. There are number of reasons why this happened: among others, the depth of the economic crisis; a new wave of social and institutional demands (e.g. the position paper on European civil society and the social economy and those of Social Economy Europe and Cooperatives Europe; the European academic world’s open letter of October 2010: “From words to action: supporting cooperative and social enterprises to achieve a more inclusive , sustainable and prosperous Europe”); and finally, but not less importantly, circumstantial factors such as certain European policy makers’ noticing the exceedingly high profile of social enterprises. Two documents in particular - the European Parliament’s 2009 resolution on the social economy (the Toia report) and the 2008 Small Business Act (SBA), which explicitly cited the social economy - were central in this respect. As a result, all these impulses led to the adoption of two fundamental documents in 2011:
Generally, the main and most important trend that can be observed in the recent evolution of the social economy is its consolidation as an emerging sector increasingly indispensable if an adequate response to the new challenges of the global economy and society is to be provided. This global challenges lie at the root of the increasing European interest in the role that Social Economy can play in the international context. Hence, this research aims to analyze how the social economy argument is used nowadays in the EU external discourse in order to assess the impact of this distinctive European model in the international arena.