Rediscovering the Value of the Co-operative Sector in SEE: History, Current Developments and Some Ideas for the Future

Co-operatives are enterprises/institutions owned and controlled by their members, who may be their workers, customers, service users, or simply concerned individuals within the community. Ownership and control is determined not by capital invested, but by membership of the co-operative and a system of ‘one person-one vote’. Co-operatives offer to both members and to the wider community alike many important economic and non-economic advantages. As the ILO has long concluded (ILO 1981, 2002; Parnell 2001; Birchall 2001, 2003), for a number of reasons co-operatives are vital community-based institutions: they create new and sustain existing jobs, help to establish and underpin economic and political democracy, promote greater equality of wealth and power, help to ensure greater personal dignity and self-respect in the workplace, underpin employment security and continuity, facilitate market access and higher returns for small-scale agricultural/rural producers and artisans, and help build crucially important reserves of solidarity and trust (social capital) in the community.