New Study Group on European Cooperative Law: Principles Project

This paper presents both a new scientific network named Study Group on European Cooperative Law (SGECOL), and the Principles of European Cooperative Law (PECOL) project, which SGECOL has identified as its first research activity. SGECOL is a European group of cooperative law scholars, established in Trento (Italy), at the European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises (Euricse), in November 2011. SGECOL s general objective is to conduct comparative research on cooperative law in Europe, thus promoting increased awareness and understanding of cooperative law within the legal, academic and governmental communities at national, European and international level. SGECOL intends to achieve this objective through various research initiatives on cooperative law, beginning with the drafting of PECOL. PECOL will take the form of legal provisions accompanied by explanatory comments. They will be developed on the basis of the existing cooperative law in Europe, focusing in particular on six European jurisdictions (Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK). PECOL, however, will not simply summarize and describe the common core of European national cooperative laws. Going beyond that, the project aims to present the main general provisions through which in the authors view cooperative law should be formulated to provide cooperatives with a definite and distinct legal identity vis-a-vis other business organizations. The PECOL project does not serve a single specific purpose, still less is its goal to impose harmonization on national cooperative laws. PECOL will be a scientific and scholarly work, capable of serving many potential functions, depending on the users particular needs.