How to support social economy entities in line with State aid rules: thoughts following the suggestions in Enrico Letta’s report

Key points

The EESC:

• stresses the importance of reconciling the need for strong public support for social economy entities – which often perform functions formerly performed by the State – with the EU rules on State aid;
• stresses the importance of social economy entities in ensuring concrete responses to the social needs of Europeans;
• points out that, in many cases and situations, the activities of social economy entities are solidarity-based and fall outside the scope of economic activities. At the same time, in many instances the cross-border nature of the activities of such entities in the social and health sectors should be considered secondary and of a scale that does not substantially affect competition between the Member States;
• believes that the rules for granting aid for the recruitment of disadvantaged workers or workers with disabilities set out in the General Block Exemption Regulation should be strengthened and simplified;
• welcomes the additional proposal made in the Letta Report on the need to adapt the current legal framework on State aid to facilitate better access to credit and funding for social economy entities;
• notes that the legal framework for aid for services of general economic interest is not being properly harnessed by public authorities;
• welcomes the announcement in the Political Guidelines for the incoming European Commission stating that ‘we will also revise our State aid rules to enable housing support measures, especially for affordable energy-efficient and social housing’;
• urges the European Commission to continue its efforts to implement the Social Economy Action Plan, as detailed in the Liège Roadmap for Social Economy and to assign to one of the new Commissioners a specific mandate to coordinate its implementation.

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