The UN General Assembly has approved this Tuesday its first resolution on the social economy -whose objective is to promote business models such as cooperatives, foundations and other companies with a participatory structure-, and which has been promoted especially by the second vice president of the Government and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz.
“The social economy is our now and our tomorrow, since it proposes an inclusive economic model with social objectives, based on internal solidarity and with people at the center,” Díaz said when defending the resolution at the UN headquarters in New York as sole representative of the Spanish Government. The text does not have a regulatory nature for Spain, but would be similar to the European recommendations, which will simply serve to promote this economic model.
Sources from the Díaz Ministry have admitted that they had been working on this proposal for two years, with special emphasis on the last one, and have defended that the social economy “allows us to govern the problems of depopulation and rural abandonment”, which is why it is so interesting for Spain .
This is the first text on this issue addressed by the UN General Assembly, something that Díaz’s team has described as “historic”. The initiative has had the co-sponsorship of more than forty countries -France is also very active- and has been adopted by acclamation, according to Efe from New York.
Díaz recalled that in Spain the social economy represents 10% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employs 12% of workers, with a “solid business fabric” that adapts to changes and allows workers to participate in business decisions and gain ownership of the means of production. “The social economy has managed to deny the cliché that the economic development of a country must inevitably sacrifice some ideals of justice and equality that, quite the contrary, must be at the core of our political and economic systems,” he defended.
During his speech, Díaz assured that the Spanish experiences with the social economy “have shown that it is possible to overcome a ruthless, soulless economic system that is based on cuts, the neglect of the most vulnerable people and that is anchored in the inequality”.
According to the head of Labor, “advancing in an economy that is more participatory, more democratic, more communal and more resistant to crises allows us to lay the foundations to improve the lives of citizens even when uncertainty stalks us.”
The second vice president had already visited the United Nations last July to promote this project, to which dozens of countries eventually joined, and in which States and international organizations are encouraged to “support and promote the social and solidarity economy as a possible model of sustainable economic and social development.
In his opinion, the social economy has a “decisive role in the transformation of the world economy towards a sustainable development model” and shows that “things can be done differently”. “The social economy is not an approximate representation of the future we want, but the evidence that it is possible to build that world that is more just, sustainable and supportive now, right now”, he stressed.
The text speaks of the social and solidarity economy as a field that includes cooperatives, associations, mutuals, foundations, social enterprises, self-help groups and other entities that operate according to their values ??and principles.
In Spain, many companies linked to the primary sector belong to the social economy -agricultural cooperatives, the agri-food sector and fishing associations-, industrial cooperatives -with the paradigmatic example of the Mondragón Group-, concerted education systems, transport and housing initiatives.
The approval of this resolution by the UN puts the finishing touch to a few weeks in which the social economy has focused the work of the Ministry of Díaz, after the Council of Ministers approved last Tuesday the Social Economy Strategy and the Draft of the new Comprehensive Social Economy Law and the Spanish Social Economy Strategy.
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