Social economy in Romania. Preliminary approach (English version)

During the past 20 years, social economy became a subject of interest because its organisations had to assume an increasing role in the production and supply of social goods and services of public interest. In Romania, although forms of social economy existed for a very long time in society, we can not speak of an institutionally or juridical determined area, with actual outputs. This study5 shows the stage of social economy development taking into consideration three forms of social economy which are present in Romania: the cooperatives, the non-governmental organisations and the mutual aid organisations. The three types of organisations have a low potential for social economy activities. There is no specific legislative framework which to encourage the development of social economy activities, while the availability of the public institutions to support the organisations addressing the vulnerable groups is very limited. The cases in which the three forms of social economy address directly the higher employment of the disadvantaged groups are rather isolated. As a general characteristic, except for the NGOs, the other types of social economy organisations address indirectly the disadvantaged groups, without any kind of coherent supply of services.