Towards the EU cooperative roadmap: Third meeting of the working group on cooperatives

On 31^st January, the third meeting of the permanent working group on cooperatives set up by EU Commission Vice-President Antonio Tajani took place in Brussels. The topic of this session was financing of cooperatives & business development support services.

The European Commission announced that a group of six experts would be created to build up concrete recommendations on cooperative training & education, financing of cooperatives, and business development support services, the three subjects that have been discussed during the meetings of the permanent group on cooperatives. The paper should be ready by June and will be presented at the high level European conference that will be organised by Commissioner Tajani together with the national member states representatives in September 2014.

Cooperatives Europe believes these three meetings have been an interesting opportunity for cooperative enterprises to discuss with the EU Commission how to support cooperatives in their role as contributors to the EU 2020 strategy. Cooperatives Europe confirms its commitment to closely work with the EU Commission to shape the EU Cooperative roadmap and strongly supports the proposal to associate national member states with the EU high-level conference in September 2014.