Brussels, 15th June 2006

EURO COOP is the European Community of Consumer Cooperatives, whose members are the national organisations of consumer cooperatives in 17 European countries. Created in 1957, Euro Coop today represents over 3,200 local and regional cooperatives, the members of which amount to more than 22 million consumers across Europe.

Eurocoop welcomes the Commission consultation on the future of the internal market, and would like hereby to respond to the consultation. Eurocoop believes that the review of the internal market policy is a very important issue for co-operatives, not only as business but also as social organisations.

Question 2:

• The Internal Market gave cooperatives the opportunity to build cross-border cooperatives (Regulation 1435/2003 on the ECS); and to harmonise the involvement of employees in the ECS (Directive 2003/72/EC).
• Even if the legal framework of cooperatives in the new Member States could be weaken by the enlargement, this latter also represents new opportunities for cooperatives, e.g. alliances with new Member States.
• With the internal market, cooperatives can remain locally focussed, maintain their specific link with the local territory and at the same time branch out their activities at the European level.
• However, cooperatives have different characteristics than stock companies and the Internal Market's regulatory framework doesn't take into account their specificities. This situation leads to unfair competition between cooperatives and other companies, insofar as cooperatives respect social responsible commitments, that others companies do not include. Thus, the European Commission and Member States should protect and pay a greater attention to the particularities of cooperatives.

Question 4:

• To facilitate the adjustment to economic reforms, the Commission should carry out detailed surveys to better assess the economic but also the social impacts (social costs) of those reforms.
• At the same time, specific flanking measures should be offered to prevent the eventual negative impacts of the market opening (i.e. level of unemployment, precariousness of working conditions). In this framework, the European Commission and Member States should support and promote cooperative enterprises, since they can play an important role in reducing the negative social impacts of the Internal Market. Indeed, as jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise, cooperatives take into account their social responsibility as undertakings.

Question 5:

• The Internal Market has increased the competition against firms and thus encouraged lower prices. It has also enabled the liberalization of previously protected monopoly markets (telecommunications, electricity, gas and water), which represents a greater choice for consumers and enterprises.
• Nevertheless, some consumers perceive negative impacts on employment level, on the provision of services of general economic interest, and on prices in general.
• At the same time, there are still important gaps in the Internal Market, in particular in the area of services (financial services, transportation and public utilities), or with regards to the complex administrative rules (red tape) where there is still some way to go.
• For enterprises, the Internal Market represents an unrestricted access to a 456 million consumers market, enabling them to achieve economies and efficiencies of scale (translated into lower prices).
• On another hand, SMEs often face barriers, e.g. administrative burden, administrative costs and difficulties to orientate themselves between National and European regulations.
• In order to enable cooperatives to take advantages of the Internal Market, it is also necessary to recognize and to encourage cross-border cooperation between cooperatives.

Question 21:

• To enhance the international competitiveness of European companies, the European Commission should encourage entrepreneurial activity, the creation and growth of innovative new businesses, such as the European Cooperative Society (ECS), which seems to be an appropriate answer to the current economic and social concerns of the EU.
• The International competitiveness has also its limits (i.e. social exclusion, precariousness…) and the Community should be in solidarity with people facing such a marginalization. Fair Trade for instance is a means to attenuate the negative impacts of the international competitiveness and the Internal Market regulation should promote such initiatives. Cooperatives, for example, as democratically-controlled enterprises, are a good example in this area, since cooperatives are leader in fair trade products retailing in many Member States.

Question 24:

• In order to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the internal market, it is necessary to promote the legal instruments of this market, i.e. new legal means and new enterprise forms, such as the ECS. Those new instruments need to be promoted by Member States in order to inform consumers and enterprises about them and to improve their implementation.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT: