Trends and Challenges for Social Enterprises in Romania

Abstract

Abstract: Over the last years, the interest for the potential of social economy organisations to support and produce economic and social development has increased substantially. Against the background of this increased interest in the area, the interest for the research of this economic sector having specific characteristics and grouping various organisations under the same identity has also increased. Starting from recent research, the main purpose of this article is to describe the landscape of social economy actors and the key elements in the evolution of the social enterprises in Romania. In the first part, we present structured information about the status quo of social economy entities such as they appear by analyzing the data collected at national level by the National Institute of Statistics and by analyzing the juridical and institutional framework of each type of organization. The analysis mainly focuses on three types of organisations – cooperatives, NGOs with an economic activity and mutual organisations. In the second part, the authors identify and analyze several key policy fields enabling the development of social economy actors. The last part of the review is dedicated to a discussion concerning the development of a specific policy framework to support the social enterprises in Romania.