Advancement of social enterprises in Italy: legal framework and recent trends

概要

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Recognition of social enterprises has developed in Italy through quite a long and complex process. It began with Law 381/1991 on social co-operatives and was progressively amended by a number of provisions to allow nonprofit organizations operating within certain criteria to engage in production activities. A general legal definition of social enterprises was introduced in 2005 with Law 118 and was formally ratified with Law 155 in 2006. In order to understand the relevance of social enterprises in Italy and the impact of Law 155/2006 on their development, it is necessary to broadly understand the evolution of the phenomenon by offering a general description of the political and economic background and the historical development of these productive nonprofit organizations. In this paper, the authors provide a description of the main contents of the new Law, from which it will be possible to compare the legal definition with the features of existing social enterprises, to describe the movement with some recent data and to investigate the potential of Italian social enterprises with some examples of the new trends.