"Type A" social cooperatives bring together providers and beneficiaries of a social service as members.

"Type B" social cooperatives bring together permanent workers and previously unemployed people who wish to integrate into the labour market.

An Italian social cooperative is a particularly successful form of multi-stakeholder cooperative, of which some 7,000 exist.

Legacoopsociali organizes and represents the social cooperatives.

Dear colleagues, we will truly have cause to celebrate when, in the place of uprooted rural ghettoes, people working in newly created social cooperatives will, upon returning to their new homes, tell their children to study and strive because they can become anything they wish.

Finally, may I emphasise the role that the Member States must play in improving the skills and promoting the specific professional training of people who cooperate within voluntary associations and the social cooperatives, in order to provide adequate professional training which is suited to the different forms of disabilities.

They provide an opportunity to reduce the effects of economic stratification on the marginalised members of society, provide honourable work, and with their various forms ranging from self-employment to social cooperatives, they are able to reapply the fruits of their labours to the benefit of the community.