Presse release - 1 May 2004

This is not a very ordinary assembly which met this year in Morzine (France) from April, the 29th to May, the 1st during the Mont Blanc Meetings.

For the very first time, about fifty chairmen or CEO of big Social Economy companies or networks, either coming from Japan, Brazil, India, Africa, Canada or from future widened Europe, either leaders of co-operatives, mutual insurance companies or associations, have met.

They met in the presence of the great World Social Forum, trade unions movements (European Trade Union Confederation), great international institutions such as the International Labour Organization, the United Nation Development Programme and of some special witnesses such as the Brazilian Secretary of State for Social Economy, Paul Singer in order to implement a more human, more equitable and more sustainable world.

Carried out by 4 French leading groups (the Macif Group - the French leading mutual insurance company, the Chèque Déjeuner Group - a European leader specialised in lunch on and social vouchers, the Crédit Coopératif Group – a leading co-operative bank, the Esfin-Ides Group - a French financial Social Economy Institution) and organized by the Cjdes (center for young leaders and actors of the French Social Economy), the Mont Blanc Meetings intend to add their contribution to the building of a " better living and humanist world”.

The attendees of the meetings wanted to show that the Social Economy could “give the tone” during one time of transformation of the world and bring its structuring and durable answers to the stakes of the present and of the future. Social Economy brings concrete and humanistic solutions to the challenges of the century : fight against poverty and exclusion, against unemployment, fight for social cohesion and for development...

Social Economy companies especially want to innovate always more and to allow the access to products and services for the greatest number.

The actors of the Mont Blanc Meetings thus decided together to occupy any international geographic space and any space of communication such as internet and new technologies.

To match these challenges, they thus decided to develop new co-operations between their organizations, from North to South and from East to West while reinforcing their alliances with trade unions, local authorities, the women movements and World Social Forum movements...

They also decided to open five specific files at an international level : health, social money, stockholders' equity management, pension funds, and measuring instruments to measure the companies social responsibility - CSR - like the French "social balance sheef'...) and to use transverse levers (creation of an International Center of survey, information exchange and analysis, creation of an international center of management in Social Economy, creation of a Social Economy market place, communication ... ).

As wished by the initiators of this international meeting, the Mont Blanc Meetings worked on a prospective manner with regard to the answers to bring (or to improve) to the big social challenges of the present and of the future.

The actors of the Mont Blanc Meetings decided to create an International Committee to pilot the follow-up of the first meeting and to prepare the second Mont Blanc meetings which will be held in 2005.

For more information, please contact:

Thierry Jeantet

President - CJDES

(33)-1 45 74 08 56

Jean-Philippe Poulnot

Director - CJDES

(33)-1 41 85 08 53

Isabelle Lardon

Chargée de projet - CJDES

(33)-1 42 93 55 65