Among the institute’s most important achievements is the social innovation eurESOP: a democratic and sustainable employee ownership model that builds on the experience and corrects the problems of the most successful employee co-ownership models (including the American ESOP, the British EOT and the Spanish Mondragon). eurESOP was recognized as a good practice in the recent European Commission report “Transition Pathway for Proximity and Social Economy”. It is also the winner of the SozialMarie Award for Social Innovation.

Despite the fact that the eurESOP model was successfully implemented in three Slovenian companies in the last year, it remains a tax-unfavorable solution due to inadequate legislative regulation. As practices from abroad demonstrate, an appropriate supportive environment – and especially tax incentives – is a basic condition for the widespread introduction of employee ownership models. With the aim of developing such an environment in Slovenia, IED, in cooperation with the Ministry of a Sustainable Future and the Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, has prepared a bill that would regulate and tax incentivise the eurESOP model.

Despite the fact that the eurESOP model is the result of many years of cooperation between leading experts in the field of employee ownership and has already been recognised as good practice abroad, since the announcement of the law, it has become the target of unfounded criticism in Slovenia, which stems mainly from a lack of understanding of the field of employee ownership and is based on widespread prejudices. The spread of these untruths threatens the smooth running of the public debate on the bill and undermines the efforts of civil society, politics and the economy to regulate the field of employee ownership in Slovenia according to the model of the most advanced economies in the world.

The campaign aims to ensure that the public and key stakeholders in the economy, socio-economic world and politics, whose support will be crucial for the success of the bill, are well informed about the eurESOP model and employee ownership in general. The campaign includes publishing informative posts on social media, including infographics, explanatory videos and interactive posts on the topic of economic democracy, and key stakeholders will also be addressed through special editions of the IED newsletter explaining how the law works.

Original source in Slovenian here and more information IED website: Best Practice: Employee Ownership Trust - How are the British EOT and the Slovenian ESOP similar and different? 

Read more about Employee Ownership: an intergenerational industrial transition and inclusive growth model.