Supporting the social economy in 2023: Key learnings

On 15 June members of the Interreg Europe community met online to discuss new innovative approaches that the public sector, both nationally and locally, is using to support the social economy across Europe.

Project partners from RaiSE, SOCENT SPAs and SOCIAL SEEDS presented their project's results. And reflected on recent social economy developments in their regions. We also welcomed representatives of the new Interreg Europe projects  MICROFUTURE and SECON.

Discover the innovative approaches shared during the session.
 

Creating a lively local ecosystem:

• In Hungary the government has initiated a National SI Laboratory which is operated by three universities and one NGO. Its goals are to map the social enterprises (SE) ecosystem and identify opportunities for piloting social innovation.
   
• The Partnership for Social Innovation is a stakeholder group in Örebro County, Sweden, that has been active since 2015. The County coordinates the entity and it consists of ca 40 organizations of which half come from the social economy and civil society. It is a platform for knowledge exchange and notably functions as a stakeholder group in every topically relevant EU project the region enters.
   
• In the Flemish Region of Belgium there exist dedicated matchmaking and online sales platforms for social enterprises. Doeners.be helps to match service economy social enterprises, especially work integration businesses, with clients. The platform helps generate work for vulnerable groups that otherwise falls by the wayside of the regular labor market. People Made on the other hand sells products made by vulnerable groups. 
   

Competence centres and dedicated social innovation teams:

• Regional Social Economy Support Centres are a form of competence centres in Poland that provide information services and networking opportunities to SEs. They are based locally to address regional realities. The Polish experience has also inspired the setup of similar centres in Slovenia and the Czech Republic.
   
• In Finland there are various multiple stakeholder organizations in place to promote the social economy. YYO is a government-funded centre of expertise for social enterprises that provides counseling and guidance services to Finnish social businesses. KEINO is a network-based Competence center for Sustainable and Innovative public procurement, funded and steered by the Ministry of Economic Affairs that offers dedicated support to public procurers across Finland through regional 'change agents'.
   
• To support social innovation within the public sector an 'Innovation Team' has been set up within the Government Office of Estonia in 2018. The task of the team is to make Estonia’s public services more user-friendly and people-centred, in cooperation with ministries and departments. The team implements design thinking and service design methodologies and uses open innovation principles.
   

Financial and non-financial support schemes for SEs:

• Ireland’s Community Services Programme is a public grant (annual co-funding) programme for supporting voluntary and community organizations in hiring managers and workers. Other countries have also implemented grant schemes (e.g. ESF funded in Latvia) for supporting social enterprises.
   
• The Ministry of Welfare in Latvia is working closely together with an association of social entrepreneurship to organize events for local municipalities to encourage them to support local social entrepreneurs. There are already some preliminary tax exemption mechanisms in place on the municipal level. 
   
• The public sector can also foster social innovation through incubation programmes. Studies (1 & 2) related to setting up such social enterprise incubators have been conducted in Lapland.
   
• ACCIO, the Catalan Agency for Business Competitiveness, continues to provide internationalization support to Catalan social enterprises. The service 'International social economy' is carried out through 40 ACCIO’s Trade and Investment offices covering 110 countries.
   
• In addition, the EU Social Economy Gateway was mentioned a one-stop-shop for the social economy on the EU level as well as the new ESF Social Innovation+ fund with a budget of 197 million Euros. The Social Innovation Match provides a platform for transferring and scaling social innovation across Europe.