Scholarly record

COOPERATIVE AS A FORGOTTEN LEGAL FORM OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Tomas Peracek, B. Mucha, J. Varga

Abstract

Under the conditions of Austro-Hungarian legal regulation, cooperatives had been based on associations which had developed from societies and therefore underwent specific legal regulation that differed from that regarding trading companies. In countries following the continental law based on the Roman law, cooperatives as legal entities have been regulated separately from trading companies. This division has been taken over by the Slovak commercial law as well. However, the Commercial Code as lex generalis of commercial law refers to the auxiliary application of its provisions on trading companies and also on a cooperative that in our conditions has had a tradition of more than a hundred years. Although undoubtedly having numerous benefits, the interest in this legal form of entrepreneurship has been significantly declining during recent years. This receding trend can be observed in case of theorists of law uninterested in the research of a cooperative as an individual entrepreneurial entity. This fact has been one of the reasons why authors decided to partially deal with such a shortcoming. Our goal is to provide an unbiased view on the regulation of a cooperative and its management by means of scientific and literary reading of the provisions В§ 221 to В§ 260 of the Commercial Code. The goal set is to be achieved primarily by using scientific literature, judicature and legal regulations. On the basis of results obtained this way, we would be able to critically assess the legal regulation of a cooperative. In the conclusion, we either confirm or dismiss the hypothesis, according to which a cooperative is a historical relic of the Slovak commercial law. The article mainly concerns the field of commercial law lapping at some point over economics and management. It also has an effect of the European as well as international-law research of the issues the concept and legal regulation of which have remained incomplete to a large extent (not solely) in the Slovak legal environment.

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