Grande dimensione e regolazione del credito cooperativo nell'UE

It is generally considered that banking sector requires transparency, fairness, integrity and confidence; currently, a very strong case, substantiated by the crisis of cooperative banks, can be made for asserting that the EU financial industry has underestimated the value and importance of customers. For instance, in the business activity of the cooperative credit institutions, members have suffered from a lack of transparency on the suitable transac-tion, which reflect a fundamental imbalance between market participants. This gap is made worse by the recent regulatory reforms that introduce forms of cooperative groups subject to holding with functions of controls and organization of corporate governance. On this view, this article examines the EU and UK regulation of cooperative banks and ar-gues that the principles of mutualism and solidarity – key features for the sustainable de-velopment of local economies – have been affected by the logic of free market. Specifi-cally, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the EU legislator has paid scant atten-tion to the cooperative values favouring the decline of banking social mandates.