THE PRINCIPLES OF EUROPEAN COOPERATIVE LAW AND THEIR IMPACT ON FUTURE LAW-MAKING ON COOPERATIVES. THE CASE OF THE NETHERLANDS

The concept of the cooperative as an organizational model has gained renewed attention from practioners,policymakers, legislators and academia over the last decades,culminatingintheUnited Nations’ proclamationof 2012 as The Year of the Cooperative.After years of relative silence on cooperative law, questionswereraised about the adequacy of the legal infrastructure of cooperatives. Did the existing legal frameworks facilitate and foster the creation of cooperatives or are theyhampering the establishment and growth of cooperatives? Legalaspects of cooperatives have beenpaid more and more attention, notablyin the field of business organizationallaw, tax law and competition law. Also new challenges and innovations in the use of the concept of the cooperative lead to a necessity to adjust legal rules on cooperatives,for example with regard to renewable energy cooperatives, credit unions and the use of cooperatives inthe platform economy. These events were accompanied by the reemergence of the cooperative movement and the creation of social economy initiatives, which have been actively promoted by the European Union and haveled in several member states to concrete policy instruments, legal measures and inducements to promote businesses inthe social economy