Activity Report 2013

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The achievement of this “2020 Vision” requires the full mobilization of the global cooperative movement. Euro Coop has begun facilitating members exchange within our working groups on each of the five topics of the Blueprint, with the aim to produce a report on the contribution of consumer co-operatives in Europe to the goals of the Blueprint and thus, to making the Co-operative Decade a reality. The advocacy work towards the EU institutions done by Euro Coop remained central to lobbying for a favourable legal framework for consumer co-operatives in Europe.

In other areas, Euro Coop maintained a strong European representation by closely following and participating in the policy developments of topics of interest to our members’ activities, namely: food, sustainability, enterprises, and consumer polices.

One of the main issues in the political agenda in Brussels relevant to co-operatives was the ground-breaking Fostering Co-operatives Working Group within DG Enterprise. Set-up and led by the European Commission Vice-President Antonio Tajani, the WG set out to identify the key challenges and priorities for co-operatives in Europe and emphasize their contribution to the Europe 2020 Strategy.

All this made 2013 a very exciting year for Euro Coop and the following pages will further outline the main activities carried out to serve our national consumer co-operative member organizations. We invite you to visit our website for more detailed information on these and other topics but also, please, do not hesitate to contact the Secretariat, as we are always at your disposal.

On behalf of the Secretariat, I would like to express our sincerest gratitude to Rodrigo Gouveia for the years of excellent service to the European consumer co-operative movement as Secretary General of Euro Coop and we wish him much success in his new challenges within the global co-operative family.

With co-operative greetings,

Todor Ivanov
Secretary-General