(1) Cooperatives cooperate among themselves to further their objectives and to support, promote, and develop other cooperatives, cooperation among cooperatives, and the cooperative business model.

(2) The purpose of cooperation is either economic or socio-political or a combination of the two.

(3) Cooperatives cooperate in forms and structures that safeguard their autonomy, are consistent with their specific features, and are guided by the principles of equality, solidarity and subsidiarity.

(4) The law may promote economic and socio-political cooperation among cooperatives as well as with other entities of the social economy.

(5) Cooperatives may not participate in structures of cooperation which prejudice their autonomy and the members‘ultimate control of the cooperative.

COMMENTARY

The Study Group on European Cooperative Law (SGECOL) includes cooperation among cooperatives in its suggested Principles of European Cooperative Law (PECOL), which are otherwise limited to the organisational structure of primary cooperatives. It does so because it sees cooperation among cooperatives as part and parcel of the organisational set-up of cooperatives. The purpose of this Introduction to the Commentary on the respective chapter of the PECOL is to shed light on what‘part and parcel’ may mean in terms of legal principles.

Cooperation among cooperatives as a specific form of inter-enterprise collaboration is an empirical fact. It predates the emergence of modern cooperatives and their subsequent regulation by law-makers in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, there‘is no simple, widely agreed upon formulation of national or even regional structures.’Indeed, national legal systems display two diverse spectra relating to either economic or sociopolitical cooperation, or to both at the same time: on the one hand, a spectrum of permitting, facilitating, actively encouraging and supporting cooperation; on the other, a spectrum of regulations on forms of cooperation, varying in their degree of intensity, scope and permanence, and ranging from total integration (e.g. mergers), via groups of cooperatives and other types of enterprises and networks, to contractual arrangements. Obviously, ways of cooperating‘are the product of history and [hence] the names vary.’