David Hiez

The OHADA Cooperative Regulation

The organization for the harmonization of business law in Africa (OHADA) was created in 1993 with 14 State Parties (SPs) mainly from Western and Central Africa. Three countries later joined the organization. The purpose of OHADA is to facilitate and encourage both domestic and foreign investment and to improve the social and economic development of its SPs. To achieve this goal, the organization seeks the construction of a modern business law. The former national legislations were strongly influenced by the law of the colonizers, and had not been seriously revised since then. OHADA faces, therefore, the task to create a new law, common to all its members, and suitable to a modern context.

New Study Group on European Cooperative Law: 'Principles' Project

This paper presents both a new scientific network named �Study Group on European Cooperative Law� (SGECOL), and the �Principles of European Cooperative Law� (PECOL) project, which SGECOL has identified as its first research activity. SGECOL is a European group of cooperative law scholars, established in Trento (Italy), at the European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises (Euricse), in November 2011. SGECOL�s general objective is to conduct comparative research on cooperative law in Europe, thus promoting increased awareness and understanding of cooperative law within the legal, academic and governmental communities at national, European and international level. SGECOL intends to achieve this objective through various research initiatives on cooperative law, beginning with the drafting of PECOL. PECOL will take the form of legal provisions accompanied by explanatory comments. They will be developed on the basis of the existing cooperative law in Europe, focusing in particular on six European jurisdictions (Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK). PECOL, however, will not simply summarize and describe the common core of European national cooperative laws. Going beyond that, the project aims to present the main general provisions through which � in the authors� view � cooperative law should be formulated to provide cooperatives with a definite and distinct legal identity vis-a-vis other business organizations. The PECOL project does not serve a single specific purpose, still less is its goal to impose harmonization on national cooperative laws. PECOL will be a scientific and scholarly work, capable of serving many potential functions, depending on the users� particular needs.