Social Entrepreneurship in Romania

Abstract

At the European level there are three main forms of juridical organization as social enterprise: cooperative social enterprises (Italy, France, Portugal, and Greece) commercial enterprises having a social purpose (England, Belgium) and social enterprises by statute claiming. In Romania there is not related legislation but juridical forms as association an foundation can be assimilated as non-profit organizations thus being assimilated to social enterprises or social activities. Following this luck of legislation a frame law of social economy is continuously elaborated from three years ago, but a second law of social entrepreneurship was voted by Romanian senate. In order to be applied the law has to be voted by Deputies Chambers. The clauses inside the law and the rapidity of its elaborations have lead to a very controversial protest of civil organizations. The arguments against it were: lack of civil society consultancy in elaboration of law, neglecting the already existing experience the definition of state and multinational companies as possible entrepreneurship actors, being thus in contradiction with European practices and European parliament recommendations there is no European legislation to define the social enterprise only by a partnership with a multinational company as it was claimed by the law maker creates confusion between social entrepreneurship and social responsibility financial interest of multinational companies was suspected