Brussels, 15 april 2008

About Euro Coop

Euro Coop is the European Community of Consumer Cooperatives, whose members are the national organisations of consumer cooperatives in 18 European countries. Created in 1957, Euro Coop today represents over 3200 local and regional cooperatives, the members of which amount to more than 25 million consumers across Europe.

Introduction

Euro Coop welcomes the European Commission's will to encourage dialogue on the EU budget review with all stakeholders. This consultation is very valuable and Euro Coop hopes that the Commission will clearly take its results into account.

In a changing world and economy, having an efficient EU budget, which clearly addresses the challenges the continent is facing, is crucial. The EU budget underpins all EU activity. A good synergy between the policy priorities and the budget structure is of great importance for the EU credibility towards its citizens and Member States. Euro Coop wishes the coming budget review will fully meet its objectives.

Comments

Being part of the social economy sector, consumer cooperatives pay a special attention to the Commission's interest in this field.

The main concern of Euro Coop relates to the declining interest showed by the Commission to social economy, which is reflected in its budget lines.

In the 2007 budget, a specific budget line dealing with Social Economy was still present. This budget line, e.g. line 02 02 07 - "Measures in the Social Economy sector (cooperatives, mutual societies, associations and foundations)", disappeared in the 2008 budget.

Euro Coop considers this reflects a gap between the Commission's claims and its concrete behaviour. Indeed, As Commissioner Verheugen recently declared to the European Economic and Social Committee, the EU is committed to contribute to the promotion of Social Economy enterprises1.

However, this commitment should be reflected concretely in the EU budget. In particular, Euro Coop calls for the reactivation of the budget line on social economy.

The importance of the Commission action should not be underestimated. In a growing integrated market, consumer cooperatives and the social economy sector are fully committed to the objectives of the Lisbon Agenda and the development of high quality jobs. With a budget line specially dedicated to the sector, the Commission showed its concrete support the development of a dynamic part of the economy, accounting for 7% of the total amount of jobs in Europe and 10% of all European business.

Euro Coop therefore calls the Commission not to leave behind consumer cooperatives and more generally social economy in its budget review 2008/2009.

Besides social economy, other key issues should be fully supported by the Commission and the budget. Among them, the fight against climate change is of major importance. It is of the utmost importance to promote a true sustainable development both in consumption as well as in production.

Additionally, the Commission should pay more attention to the promotion of products with high social and environmental standards such as fair trade and organic farming.

In the past years, the Commission made some efforts to promote energy efficiency. Euro Coop encourages the Commission to hold this line and to develop it establishing more ambitious goals, as energy has to be significantly spared to adapt our societies to climate change.

As regards food policy, the cloning of animals for food purposes, genetically modified organisms and the use of nanotechnologies are issues to remain under scrutiny and nutrition and the fight against obesity has to be more consequently promoted to improve consumer health.

Finally, Euro Coop as a consumer organization firmly asks for an improvement of EU consumer policy. Consumer policy should be developed in the sense of integrating it into all other Community policies. On the other hand, consumer policy should shift from a perspective of protecting consumers to the empowerment of consumers. For that, better and more funding from the EU budget is necessary to be consequent with the policy statements.

In conclusion, Euro Coop calls the Commission to promote consumer cooperatives and social economy in its budget review, as well as to further develop sustainable development and an empowered consumer policy, with the necessary allocation of funding.

1. "Social economy enterprises, linking profitability to solidarity, have the capacity to reply efficiently to the challenges of the 21st century and to achieve the Lisbon goals. The Commission is convinced that the overall development of the sector is beneficial to Europe. We are therefore committed to contribute to its promotion" (Seminar on Social Economy: a key sector for growth and jobs", 3rd December 2007, EESC).

For further information, please contact:
EURO COOP
Tel: +32 (0)2 285 00 70
E-mail: infoateurocoop.coop