The Social Platform hosted an in-depth discussion of what is meant by social enterprise, social business and social entrepreneurship during its working group on 4th October. The discussion was led by CEDAG vice president Ariane Rodert who is also rapporteur for an opinion of the EESC on the subject, and by Bruno Roelants, General Secretary of CECOP. (Reminder: CEDAG will develop this theme further in an open meeting taking place on 25th November in Brussels)

The exploratory opinion by the EESC stems from the Single Market Act: social enterprise is one of the 12 levers; it’s also mentioned in the European Platform Against Poverty, one of the flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 strategy. In the opinion the preferred term used is social enterprise, not social entrepreneurship. The thinking behind this is the desire to support all sections of lifecycle - not just the stage of entrepreneurship, is only one part of the whole concept of social entreprise.

 The key criteria linked to the definition of social enterprise are:

Social Platform is carrying out a survey among its members and members' national members to gather relevant information on the different forms of provision of SSGI in the 27 member states.

This survey is useful to identify specific problems and concrete cases and examples at grass-root level which can provide evidence of the trends detected, as well as examples of national legislation that could serve as good practice. The results will be discussed in the next SGI WG meeting on November 22.

CEDAG members can download and fill in the questionnaire with information on national contexts and send it to the This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   by 5th November.