Co-op News (August 2019)
What is co-operative culture - and why does it matter? This issue looks at how co-op values intersect with the values in organisations, across movements and between countries. Plus 100 years of the Channel Islands Co-operative – and how the new Coop Exchange app is tackling the capital conundrum.
What is co-operative culture - and why does it matter? This issue looks at how co-op values intersect with the values in organisations, across movements and between countries. Plus 100 years of the Channel Islands Co-operative – and how the new Coop Exchange app is tackling the capital conundrum.
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CO-OP CULTURE IN<br />
EUROPE<br />
How can we bring together different national cultures in one<br />
organisation? Cec<strong>op</strong> looks back during its anniversary conference<br />
BY ANCa VOINEA<br />
Forty years ago co-<strong>op</strong> apex bodies from<br />
six Eur<strong>op</strong>ean states met in Manchester<br />
where they agreed to set up Cec<strong>op</strong>, the<br />
Eur<strong>op</strong>ean <strong>Co</strong>nfederation of co-<strong>op</strong>s in<br />
industry and services.<br />
At the time, the UK was governed by<br />
Margaret Thatcher, who was breaking the<br />
UK’s post-war political consensus. Her<br />
approach changed economic and fiscal<br />
policy at national and global level, while<br />
economic liberalisation changed the<br />
world of work and curbed union power.<br />
Cec<strong>op</strong> president Giuseppe Guerini<br />
says the world now faces similar<br />
challenges to those of 1979, with<br />
illiberal p<strong>op</strong>ulism on the rise in<br />
Eur<strong>op</strong>e and elsewhere. In response, he<br />
sees co-<strong>op</strong>s as playing a key role in<br />
safeguarding democracy.<br />
Speaking at the organisation’s 40th<br />
anniversary conference in Manchester<br />
on 21 June, he looked at its achievements<br />
in bringing co-<strong>op</strong>s together to share<br />
experience and speak with one voice.<br />
Vice president Siôn Whellens said:<br />
“The purpose of us getting together is<br />
understanding one another, tackling the<br />
sometimes uneven devel<strong>op</strong>ment of our<br />
movement across Eur<strong>op</strong>e and being ready<br />
for global challenges.”<br />
Rainer Schlüter, secretary general<br />
of Cec<strong>op</strong> from 1985 to 2004, said that<br />
in 1979 other sectoral organisations<br />
were representing Eur<strong>op</strong>ean co-<strong>op</strong>s in<br />
retail, agriculture or banking. But these<br />
organisations were focusing on sectorspecific<br />
issues, rather than lobbying for<br />
the co-<strong>op</strong> business model.<br />
<strong>Co</strong>-<strong>op</strong> bodies from across six Eur<strong>op</strong>ean<br />
states joined Cec<strong>op</strong> not only to defend<br />
the worker co-<strong>op</strong> model, but also speak<br />
for the co-<strong>op</strong> concept with a single voice<br />
before Eur<strong>op</strong>ean institutions. Cec<strong>op</strong>’s<br />
permanent secretariat was established in<br />
1982 in Brussels.<br />
Initial successes included getting<br />
co-<strong>op</strong>s for the first time on the agenda of<br />
MEPs in 1981 and securing a debate on a<br />
Eur<strong>op</strong>ean co-<strong>op</strong>erative code. But agreeing<br />
a common message proved a challenge<br />
for Cec<strong>op</strong>’s members as well as other<br />
co-<strong>op</strong> sectoral organisations.<br />
“The histories and cultures of co-<strong>op</strong><br />
movements were very different and had<br />
very different rules,” said Mr Schlüter,<br />
adding that movements across different<br />
countries were worried their national<br />
co-<strong>op</strong> cultures would disappear under a<br />
Eur<strong>op</strong>ean co-<strong>op</strong>erative statute. German<br />
co-<strong>op</strong>s were worried the ability of their<br />
apex body to approve the establishment<br />
of co-<strong>op</strong>s would be eroded; Italian co-<strong>op</strong>s<br />
had multiple organisations and voices;<br />
and French co-<strong>op</strong>s were afraid indivisible<br />
reserves rules could change.<br />
If Italy and France had strong industrial<br />
co-<strong>op</strong>s, Belgium had co-<strong>op</strong>s <strong>op</strong>erating as<br />
an alternative economy model – and the<br />
UK movement included many radical<br />
worker-owned businesses. Holland had<br />
loose forms of self-managed enterprises,<br />
said Mr Schlüter, adding that Cec<strong>op</strong><br />
needed to keep an <strong>op</strong>en mind.<br />
In the late 1980s the Eur<strong>op</strong>ean<br />
<strong>Co</strong>mmission (EC) fully recognised the<br />
social economy sector through the<br />
creation in 1989 of a social economy unit<br />
in the DG Enterprise. Following multiple<br />
reorganisations, the unit was replaced<br />
by the autonomous Eur<strong>op</strong>ean Standing<br />
<strong>Co</strong>nference of <strong>Co</strong>-<strong>op</strong>eratives, Mutual<br />
societies, Associations and Foundations<br />
(CEP-CMAF), which ad<strong>op</strong>ted the name<br />
Social Economy Eur<strong>op</strong>e in 2007.<br />
36 | AUGUST <strong>2019</strong>