Social enterprises are entering a new phase of consolidation after overcoming various challenges over the last 10 years in their efforts to foster sustainable local development, help create local wealth and jobs, and fight social exclusion. This book contains recommendations for national and...

Social enterprises straddle the border between the public and the private sector and break new ground in the allocation and management of economic resources, forming what the European Commission calls the "third system". While they all take a broadly similar approach across countries, these...

Recent socio-economic trends, welfare state reform; the emergence of civil society and democracy have highlighted the growing significance of the non-profit sector – a sector between state and market – often associated with concepts such as ‘social economy’, ‘third sector’,...

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the Estonian policy ecosystem in place for social innovation, social entrepreneurship and social enterprises. It identifies the country’s key strengths and challenges and provides policy recommendations to support the development of a stronger...

This paper explores the linkages between regional strategies for the social economy and regional development in four EU countries: France, Spain, Sweden and Poland. It provides a comparative perspective of regional strategies for the social economy (Section 1), based on i) the level of...