Loomio
Mon 18 Jun 2018 8:15AM

FairShares in Belgian law

MA Marina Aubert Public Seen by 77

adapting FairShares into Belgian law on cooperatives

MA

Marina Aubert Mon 18 Jun 2018 8:16AM

I am currently adapting the FairShares model for our cooperative under Belgian law. Any help or past experience are welcome.
The Belgian law on cooperatives is already quite advanced into the Social Economy rules.

C

Cliff Mon 18 Jun 2018 3:00PM

Wonderful! But my experience of adapting the rules are weak - happy to help where I can

MA

Marina Aubert Mon 18 Jun 2018 3:03PM

Thanks!
My notary says a lot already exists in the Belgian law on cooperatives. So I have to read it all before being able to add precisely the FairShares parts! I started to follow the MOOC and am supposed to finish it for beginning of July. Hopefully I'll have more material to share by then :)

R

Rory (FSA) Sat 7 Jul 2018 3:20AM

Marina - we have just worked through feedback from the UK regulator and if your law does not support voting in member classes for special resolutions, we think we have a workaround by empowering a multi-stakeholder social audit committee which has to approve special resolutions before they can be put to members.

C

Cliff Sat 7 Jul 2018 9:20AM

That's a good solution

MA

Marina Aubert Mon 9 Jul 2018 10:44AM

Belgian law on cooperatives does support voting in member classes for special resolutions!

R

Rory (FSA) Tue 17 Jul 2018 7:47PM

Excellent - what are the thresholds for passing special resolutions (in terms of overall membership, and support from a majority of classes)?

MA

Marina Aubert Wed 18 Jul 2018 1:23PM

In general it's a two third majority for special resolutions + a full majority in each class. I have to study this precisely because I am used to it as a member and administrator of cooperatives, but I didn't check the law yet.

R

Rory (FSA) Mon 23 Jul 2018 8:26AM

If that is the case, that is excellent because it matches the logics of the way special resolutions are framed in the FairShares Rules Generator for co-operatives. I justifies leaving the 'international' version unaltered, and only customising the UK version where multi-stakeholding is not supported in this way. Once you have confirmed, do let me know because it was slightly tortuous to implement in UK co-operative law (even though easy in UK Company Law!)