The ICA-EU partnership aims to bring the cooperative model to the next level within international development policies and programs. It is built around activities focused on increasing visibility, enhancing advocacy, sharing capacity building, strengthening cooperative development networking, and supporting all these with evidence from exhaustive research.
Responding to challenges and existing knowledge gaps facing the cooperative movement, the mapping research seeks to collect exhaustive, consistent and reliable data on the cooperative situation in every region and across sectors, in order to provide an accurate picture of the movement to both cooperators and external stakeholders, and to reinforce other policy, capacity building, visibility and networking activities undertaken in the partnership. This map displays the current results available in Europe.
Cooperatives benefit from regulations acknowledging their specificities and ensuring a level playing field with other types of business organizations. The absence of a specific legal framework for cooperatives or a weak legal framework may damage cooperatives, while in contrast a supportive regulation may allow their development.
Knowledge and evaluation of cooperative legislation is a necessary tool for ICA offices and members to support their advocacy and recommendations on the creation or improvement of legal frameworks, to document the implementation of cooperative legislation and policies, and to monitor their evolution. This map displays the current results available in Europe.
