Slide 10 of 13

Coops create jobs and much more

The first Swedish CDC's were started in the early and mid-eighties, in 1986 they started to cooperate in informal networks. The Network was founded for mutual training, competence development, and exchanges of experiences and information between the different CDC's. Amongst the members we find the established worker cooperative, agricultural and consumer cooperative movements alongside the growing new cooperative movement. In some CDC's you will find county councils and communities as active members, and in other places you will find other parts of the national movement. All together the CDC's have more than 1000 members and around 150 employees.

Every CDC has a strong local and regional attachment: a condition to obtain governmental subsidies. This rather modest financial support is used to provide a first free advice for groups forming coops, as well as for the general public in the region.

In 1994 the CDC's decided to form an organisation to become even better in local development. The Association of Swedish Cooperative Development Centres is a non-profit organisation. The organisations main aim is to support the local CDC's. To be successful there must be a supporting political atmosphere in the sense that the political parties both verbally and financially express their support both to the idea of worker coops as well as to the idea of consumer coops and the whole social economy. The financial support must be substantial, as the groups that form cooperatives are normally financially weak and cannot, on their own, afford to pay for the support they need. Also, the newly formed cooperatives needs support in initial funding of their company, this support need not to be direct, it could be indirect financial support in form of vouching for loans. For example in Göteborg there is a foundation, created by the municipality and the cooperative movement, that gives this kind of financial support.

The CDC's in Sweden has every year been involved in the creation of around 300 - 500 new cooperatives each year. It's now a strong movement.

Different evaluations show that the CDC's create new jobs or remains jobs to a very low cost. The financial support from the government is very efficient.

The CDC's it self is partnership on the regional/county level. You will find the whole cooperative family, side by side with other parts of the social economy, folksmovement, trade unions and municipals, counties and so on.

The latest evaluation shows the lack of knowledge about cooperatives within many authorities and organisations working with support and information to new entrepreneurs. A main part of the information-activities in the CDC's are dedicated to overcome this situation. Extremely many resources are used to inform municipalities, employment offices and others about the fact that there are legal and fiscal similarities between a ltd company and the cooperative. It's not well known that the financial support to newstarters is similar no matter what kind of enterprise you start.

Finally about Sweden, we are very proud of the work that has been done during the last years. Last year we organised a huge information campaign together with the Government. This is called Starting enterprise together. The Swedish public television has shown eight programmes about how to start cooperatives; we have a new WEB page and a lot more.

This story about Sweden is one example of what's going on in Europe today.

In the research that was made for the Bologna conference that I mentioned in the beginning, shows similar development all over Europe. I will give you some examples what we did find important.

We need a dynamic and interesting discussion and to agree that it's important to stress the opportunities to create new bridges, to work cross-boarders or intersectorial. We all have to learn from each other.

There is a strong trend of new creations within the movement both internally with new solutions and new actions in the existing and classical cooperative movements. We can also se a strong new creation.

We need to strengthen our work and the actions we can take to make Europe truly inclusive. We have to fight for social and economic integration, equal opportunities and combating marginalisation and social exclusion.

It demands that we decisively tackle all the factors, which lead to exclusion, lack of democracy and possibilities for active participation, poverty, unemployment, poor education, poor health and housing, urban decay and marginalisation.

Comments or questions? Contact the COPAC Coordinator.
Posted: 19 July 2000