After establishing that cooperative law must be derived from the cooperative principles enshrined in the 1995 International Cooperative Alliance Statement on the Cooperative Identity (ICA Statement; "the cooperative principles"), and that it must conform to the legal principle of sustainable development, this contribution discusses several problems lawmakers face when implementing these two determinants of cooperative law in practice. This dual foundation of cooperative law is not a call for uniformity. Both "the cooperative principles" and the principle of sustainable development allow and require variations, as uniformity contradicts the person-centered nature of cooperatives and drains the source of (sustainable) development, which is diversity. The contribution briefly addresses the challenges of translating "the cooperative principles" into law and justifies the raison d'être of a separate cooperative enterprise law, considering that Corporate Social Responsibility has evolved into a Corporate Social and Societal Obligation for all types of enterprises, and in light of the growing number of laws on social and/or solidarity economy enterprises. It argues that the defining feature permeating the legal form of cooperatives is member democratic participation. This feature continues to distinguish cooperatives and provides an effective mechanism to regenerate social justice - an aspect of the legal objective of cooperatives and a central element of sustainable development. However, several barriers hinder member democratic participation. Two stand out: radical structural changes in cooperatives and the de-organization of all enterprise types induced by globalization factors such as digitization, digitalization, and the instantaneous transferability of data.
H Henry (Mon,) studied this question.
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