Next year Slovenia is going to be the centre of social economy, whereas Maribor was awarded to be the European Capital of Social Economy for 2018. at the Social Summit of the Member States of the European Union held in Goteborg Sweden.
As part of this conference, the State Secretary of the Cabinet of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia, Tadej Slapnik, presented the activities of Slovenia at the panel called “Favorable ecosystems for social economy” regarding establishment and strengthening of the social economy ecosystem in Slovenia and in connection with the green and circular economy, blockchain technology and distributed economy.
Within the framework of the conference Slovenia was unanimously supported at the meeting of the Monitoring Committee of the Luxembourg Declaration in Goteborg, for the chairmanship and management of the Monitoring Commitee in 2018. That means that Slovenia will lead 14 EU countries of the assets in the field of social economy development at national and European level. The management of the Monitoring Committe will be taken over by Slovenia from Spain, which led the Monitoring Committee of the Luxembourg Declaration in 2017.
In May this year, Slovenia became one of the 9 EU member states that adopted the Madrid Declaration that calls on European Commision to include a European Action Plan for the social economy, adequately fnanced in its 2018 programme and to strnghten the role of the social economy in the Europen Pillar of social rights and in the ongoing debate on the future of Europe.
According to Social Economy Europe, there are more than 2 million social economy enterprises and organisations in Europe, making up 10% of Europe’s businesses. While the economy has suffered considerably since the financial crisis, statistics show that the social economy sector has not only been stable in recent years, but actually experienced significant employment growth: from 11 million jobs in 2002/2003 to 14.5 million jobs in 2009/2010.
Social economy is one of the entrepreneurial models that will shape the economy of the 21st century. European social economy is made of 2 million enterprises representing 10% of all European enterprises and employ 14 million paid employees (6.5% of the working population in the EU).
