Utilization of the Social Cooperative Form for the Exercise of LiberalProfessions

TOPIC 11 – STAGE 3 – MESO. The 2/2007 Professional Companies Act, of 15th March, allows these companies to adopt any social form, including a cooperative form (art. 1.2 LSP). It might be thought that professional companies... [ view full abstract ]

TOPIC 11 – STAGE 3 – MESO. The 2/2007 Professional Companies Act, of 15th March, allows these companies to adopt any social form, including a cooperative form (art. 1.2 LSP). It might be thought that professional companies under a cooperative form are placed next to the level of those cooperatives of services associating professionals, but there is not such a proximity. A cooperative form might be valid to satisfy the instrumental needs of liberal professionals, being so what a cooperative of services- amongst many other options- allows for. However, the case is different when it comes to allow for the joint practice of a professional activity that requires an official University degree and the enrollment in the pertinent Professional Association, which is the intended purpose of professional companies- under a cooperative form.
In the latter case – real professional company- the cooperative will act on its own behalf and will assume the rights and obligations inherent to the practice of the professional activity as the holder of the legal relationship established with the client (art. 1.1.3º LSP). For its part, (professional) partners will have to practice their professional activities on behalf of the company but assuming jointly the responsibility of their acts (art. 11 and TDA-Second LSP).
The joint practice of a professional qualified activity is the element that allows professional cooperative companies to be considered as a new special form of cooperative - not a kind of cooperative – authorized by the general society legislator - not by the cooperative legislator –and considered as a form of collective self-employed work, without placing them in the frame of associated work cooperatives and, therefore, without explicitly imposing the application of this regulation.
Professional partners will have the status of self-employed workers regarding the entity where they are inserted, together with their respective professional-labor rights, but they will not have the status of an economically-dependent self-employed worker, neither with their professional company nor with the company which represents their main client.
This communication is aimed at the analysis of the cooperative as a professional company.