Stronger measures in four specific areas would make it more effective according to the EESC, which is otherwise happy to see that many of its proposals have been taken on board.

In an opinion adopted at its May plenary the EESC gave the thumbs up to the European Commission's Social Economy Action Plan, which takes up many of the proposals the EESC has made over more than a decade.

"We are thrilled to see this long-awaited plan adopted, but the work is only just beginning," says opinion rapporteur Giuseppe Guerini. "Now is the time to implement this plan with bold and long-term measures. The EESC has many innovative and concrete proposals to make sure that the social economy's potential is fully exploited in as many EU Member States as possible".

In the plan, the EESC singles out four key areas where it believes stronger measures could be taken:

•    More agile forms of cooperation between public administrations and social economy enterprises working together locally on the provision of services of general interest, with a clear distinction in the public procurement directive between the pursuit of the general interest and competition-driven activities.

•    Regulatory action, possibly in the form of guidelines, to clarify the requirements for access to state aid and the amount of support available to Member States, so that they can use all the flexibility available to help social economy enterprises. It will not be enough to organise workshops and webinars, as the Commission suggests.

•    A system of guaranteed credits and loans, as already in place for SMEs across the EU, established by Member States with EU support. It is all well and good to launch new financial products to mobilise private funding for social economy enterprises, but many of them need support in getting access just to everyday credit.

•    Specific taxation for the social economy is fine, but Member States need to be accompanied on the path towards coordinated fiscal harmonisation, perhaps inspired by good practices in some of them, such as tax exemptions on undistributed profits, lower VAT rates, reductions on or exemptions from social insurance costs. (dm)