Cooperatives Europe

Cooperatives Europe is the voice of cooperative enterprises in Europe. On behalf of its 84 member organisations from 34 European countries across all business sectors it promotes the cooperative business model in Europe. Its members represent 141 million individual member cooperators owning 176.000 co-operative enterprises and providing jobs to 4.7 million European citizens, a force for economic growth and social change. Cooperatives Europe promotes the cooperative business model at European level. We advocate granting the plurality of business forms in Europe. It is about increasing knowledge and recognition of the cooperative business model among EU authorities, designing and implementing policies and tools to support the development of the cooperative enterprises and anticipating the impact of new EU or national legislation. We foster communication amongst and about cooperative enterprises. We focus our efforts on creating tools to connect with our members and, together with them, we increase the visibility, awareness and recognition of cooperatives at EU level. We enhance the development of cooperative businesses: cooperative enterprises enable people to become key players in their own social and economic development. They are thus a key tool for European and international growth strategy. Cooperatives Europe works on integrating the cooperative business model into the EU policies and programmes and to promote cooperatives as viable partners for the EU institutions.