La finance solidaire en Belgique et en France : une analyse comparative

Abstract

Solidarity-based finance is a concept mainly used in France and Belgium to describe the financing of the third sector. It is a mix between impact investing (when the investor directly finances the social enterprises) and SRI (when the put money into solidarity-based funds investing in social enterprises). During this work, we described the main actors of solidarity-based finance in France and Belgium. This allowed us to note that the main solidarity-based banks in both countries (La NEF in France and Triodos in Belgium) are liked to anthroposophy. We consider that this link could lead solidarity-based finance to some polemics in the future due to the unclear links anthroposophy had with the nazi regime before and during the World War II. Through the comparison we made between Belgium and France, we noted several differences. -Per capita, the Belgians invest almost 3 times more than the Frenches. -While the Belgians mainly invest directly in social enterprises, the Frenches usually prefer to invest in solidarity-based funds. -The main investment medium for the Frenches is the solidarity-based employee saving. Despite an evident potential (big employee saving and solidarity-based finance amounts), there are no solidarity-based employee saving funds in Belgium. We identified several obstacles and possible solutions that could lead to the creation of the first solidarity-based employee saving funds in Belgium. Among them, a combination between pension funds (preferably SRI) and solidarity-based funds, or the legal creation of the Belgian equivalent of the French PEE. We also interrogated some experts about the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on solidarity-based finance. If everyone agrees that social enterprises have suffered as other classical enterprises, most of them see this crisis as an opportunity for the future of solidarity-based finance. This optimism is mainly due to the rise of awareness provoked by this crisis and the necessity to relocate some parts of the economy.