2.6 Accountability and responsibility in the Belgian, Greek, and UK social enterprise law

This Sub-section 2.6 examines the legal variable of accountability and responsibility in each of the selected tailor-made legal forms. The variable addresses how the responsibility of decision-makers is organised and how decision-makers are made accountable to stakeholders. In this respect, the Commission defines a social enterprise as an organisation that is managed in an open, transparent and responsible manner (see Sub-section 2.2). Therefore, this legal variable concerns the way in which the activities of social enterprises are managed as well as the level of transparency they employ.

Particularly relevant is the form in which the tailor-made legislation imposes information duties and reporting requirements on the governing bodies of the social enterprises, and the content of such duties and requirements. The current Sub-section also considers the type of information that the social enterprise is obliged to present to its stakeholders in the context of discharging its duty of accountability and responsibility. This is discussed particularly concerning social enterprises that are often regarded as multi-stakeholder entities with high internal and external transparency standards.