WHY IS THERE NO SOCIAL ENTERPRISE SECTOR IN THE NETHERLANDS ? A comparison with the Belgian situation.

                   Jef BREDA
                   University of Antwerp/ NIAS.

In nearly all ( old ) EU countries we find since the late eighties a more or less elaborated and institutionalized new social economy notwithstanding the huge divergences in their social, economic and political structures. Now that the new social economy concept and practice spreads towards the newer EU member states the question remains why the Netherlands have no formal policy nor legal regulation and no national association for it and why the concept of a new social economy is still absent in their policy debates on the long term unemployed persons. In the early eighties a lot of social innovations were tried out in the Netherlands as in many other countries and during the nineties – again like many other countries- the central government introduced a series of secondary labourmarket plans including schemes for temporary subsidized jobs for the many unemployed at that time, and again there was at no time a start of a real institutionalization process. Since 2000 an outspoken active labourmarket policy is put forward with a strong tendency to concentrate these efforts into the local authorities wherein non-profit as well as profit companies can compete in the tendering procedures for training and job placements contracts. But still there is no sign of an autonomous sector. In the meantime, Belgium- a comparable country with a quite similar social, economic and political structure- has developed since 1990 a huge new social economy sector with strong regulations, hundreds of social enterprises emerged and regional as well as central associations and support structures were formed and all are now firmly institutionalized. How came this divergence about and what could be the main reason for these divergent lines of development ? The unemployment figures were over and again in the eighties and the nineties very high in both countries and the levels of participation in the labourmarket were just as low. Actually the unemployment rate is lower in the Netherlands but the number of long term unemployed remains there quite high. So an explanation cannot be found in divergent labourmarket situations but in issues related to the institutional design and choices e.g. the way governance structures channeled the initial demands and have been subsequently redefined in the broad field of the third sector.

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