The Barriers for the Development of the Social Cooperative Enterprises in Greece

This article, briefly, presents the difficulties and the obstacles for the development of the social cooperative enterprises in Greece, from their formation until today, according to the Greek legislative framework for the Social Economy. Specifically, this article analyses and focuses on the barriers for the operation and the growth of the social cooperative enterprises in Greece which are mainly related to the lack of a specific, comprehensive and stable institutional framework for social enterprises; their weak financial position due to lack of investors and non-activation of state funding tools; the lack of evaluation and measurement of their social impact by institutional entities; the high levels of existing administrative bureaucracy of the involved public authorities; the limited information of the public servants and the employees of the private sector for the Social Entrepreneurship; the lack of available training for the staff of social cooperative enterprises that deals with administrative tasks; the low level of sensitisation of the local societies for the Social Economy Sector, etc. The article leads to some conclusions and suggestions for the improvement of the effectiveness of the national legislative framework and also to some prerequisites in order to boost the growth of the social cooperative enterprises in Greece.