Today, the European Commission’s expert group on the social economy, GECES, held its sixth plenary meeting. The meeting was attended as an observer by a representative of the European Committee of the Regions, the only EU institution whose role is to directly represent the local and regional level in Brussels.
The meeting addressed six major topics: the GECES work programme for 2027–2029, access to finance for social enterprises, sectoral data and statistics, the EU anti-poverty strategy, the analysis of impact-oriented enterprises, and the role of energy communities in EU policy.
Regions and cities: why the CoR’s presence in GECES matters
Observers from the European Committee of the Regions do not have voting rights. They can, however, speak and put forward proposals. Today, we used this opportunity to bring before European experts the reality that strategy papers often fail to show: there is a serious gap between frameworks that exist on paper and the way the prescribed measures actually function in practice.
The mid-term review of the Social Economy Action Plan, published on 30 March 2026, confirms that 21 Member States are developing or have already adopted social economy strategies, and that EUR 1.62 billion in EU funding has been allocated to the sector for the 2021–2027 period. This represents real progress. But it is also true that these figures do not translate equally across all regions of the EU.
Romania is a good example of this dual reality. It has had a social economy law since 2015. ESF+ funding is available. A national strategy is being prepared. Yet there is also a recurring pattern: social cooperatives established with EU funding dissolved once the project ended, because the intermediary support system needed to keep them alive was never created. A professionally reviewed 2026 analysis describes Romania’s social economy as formally active but structurally dysfunctional.
The first proposal: an ecosystem maturity diagnostic tool
The CoR representative proposed that the GECES work programme for 2027–2029 should include a dedicated workstream on ecosystem maturity diagnostics. Such a tool would not measure how many strategies have been adopted, but rather what percentage of social enterprises are still operating three years after their creation, how heavy their administrative burden is compared with traditional businesses, and whether a genuine intermediary support system exists at local level.
The European Committee of the Regions offered to participate as a co-designer in the development of this tool and to provide regional case studies, including difficult cases.
The second proposal: a small-scale rural energy community financing product
Energy communities, in which citizens jointly produce and share renewable energy, are recognised under EU law as organisations that follow a social economy logic: community ownership, democratic governance and the reinvestment of local benefits. The Citizens Energy Package, published in March 2026, sets a target of 90 GW of community energy capacity by 2030.
The problem is not eligibility in principle. The problem is practical accessibility. Due to administrative complexity and minimum project size requirements, a small rural cooperative is, in practice, unable to access InvestEU resources.
The CoR proposed that GECES recommend to the Commission the creation of a small-scale financing product for rural energy communities, with simplified access provided through regional energy agencies.
Next steps
The next GECES plenary meeting will take place in September 2026. A written contribution on the ecosystem diagnostic tool will be submitted before that meeting. The European Committee of the Regions remains committed to ensuring that the voice of territories is present in European debates that directly affect local communities.