European perspectives on the social economy

In Europe, social economy consists of a lot of actors and it manages to produce social usefulness and to cover needs that the public sector or the business environment fail to meet. The organisational forms, the social objectives and the areas of activity of the social enterprises can vary from one country to another because they may be involved in activities helping local development or promoting the environmental activities; they may provide services, manage finances, or they may apply commercial rules in order to encourage the international development. This paper approaches the social economy at European level considering the typology of the welfare systems and the peculiarities of each individual state. The portability and transferability of this organisational form may become a hindrance when the attention focuses only on the formal aspect regarding the mechanical transfer of some patterns from the European level to the regional level.