Interview with Jean-Louis Bancel, President of Coop FR
President of Coop FR since 2015, Jean-Louis Bancel has been a member of the board of directors of the International Cooperative Alliance for 15 years. In 2022, he has applied to become its president. Here he explains the importance of the international dimension of the cooperative movement.
"For cooperative leaders and managers who manage their daily lives, Europe and the international dimension are very far away and they are not necessarily interested. Yet it is important to understand why the international dimension of the cooperative movement is important. With the younger generations, a form of cultural globalisation and a better knowledge of languages, this is changing. In the face of anonymous and financial globalisation, we can experience an internationalisation within the world cooperative movement that favours human encounters and common projects! Our country has everything to gain from this.
Let's remember that an innovation such as the SCIC status (cooperative societies of collective interest) owes a lot to Italian social cooperatives or that educational initiatives such as youth cooperatives or “Campus cooperative” are largely inspired by our Quebec friends. Conversely, France, which is known and recognised as a great cooperative country, can contribute its experience; in fact, Coop FR receives many foreign delegations who come to exchange on French practices and models.
Our country can also contribute new ideas such as, for example, a reflection on cooperative labelling (what we call here the cooperative audit and which the Anglo-Saxons call the audit-coop) or on the creation of data cooperatives in the face of GAFAM. We need to rethink digital and digital technology from the point of view of the commons, and move into new areas. This is the meaning of my candidacy for the presidency of the International Cooperative Alliance, which I believe needs to be given a boost, and this by mobilising cooperatives, the first links in our international movement."