Organizers
Bordeaux GSEF 2025
This 7th edition of the Forum is organized by the City of Bordeaux, whose mayor is also President of the GSEF, with the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region, the Department of Gironde, Bordeaux Métropole and the CRESS Nouvelle-Aquitaine, in close collaboration with the GSEF General Secretariat.
Pierre Hurmic
Mayor of Bordeaux
President of the GSEF
A major event is set to be held in Bordeaux in October 2025. We are immensely proud of being the host city for the seventh Global Social and Solidarity Economy Forum, and as mayor, I am not only proud but also extremely hopeful, because there is every reason to believe that in economic terms, the twenty-first century will either be SSE or won’t be, to paraphrase a famous quote by Malraux.
That is my deep, personal conviction, and it is ours, collectively. Back in 2021, the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region, the Department of Gironde, Bordeaux Métropole and the City of Bordeaux decided to move forward hand in hand in support of the Social and Solidarity Economy, to encourage innovation and collective approaches while raising awareness among new audiences, and to facilitate access to land for committed businesses. This is a rare and exemplary situation.
The consequences of this joint commitment are very tangible, and the figures are eminently encouraging. In the municipality of Bordeaux alone, where there are almost 1,500 establishments – half of the city’s SSE organisations – the number of employees has increased by more than 20% in the last ten years.
We have managed to turn our regions into testing grounds, inventing new relationships and creating virtuous economies that promote the principles of solidarity and social utility. We are proving by example that municipalities and other local authorities have a central role to play, thanks to their proximity to citizens.
In 2022, I travelled to the UN headquarters in New York to represent local government bodies and business networks in support of the need for a reference text on the SSE. Such a resolution was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 18 April 2023. This was an important milestone, which we celebrated at the Dakar Forum held during the following month. The Bordeaux 2025 Forum will be an opportunity to take another step in what is nothing short of a revolution.
Stéphane
Montuzet
President of the CRESS
Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Co-President of the GSEF
Much more than a purely economic project, the
Social and Solidarity Economy is also a political project.
It encompasses the pursuit of a fairer society
that defends rights and our environment, a society
based
on solidarity, and a vision of equitably,
redistributed wealth based on sustainably managed resources.
Collective action must be taken on an international scale if this project is to succeed. Within the GSEF, the commitment of the SSE stakeholders and players represented by the CRESS Nouvelle Aquitaine and ESS France reflects this desire for social transformation that makes the economy a vehicle for individual and collective emancipation.
Our next event – the Bordeaux 2025 Forum – will showcase this profusion of initiatives, practices and people committed to serving the general interest.
Our conviction is that a desirable and just future can only be achieved through the SSE and the policy of forging the links required to foster solidarity between the world’s citizens.
Alain Rousset
President of Nouvelle-Aquitaine Regional Council
The Social and Solidarity Economy is inextricably linked to my conception of political action. It is just as much one of the linchpins of a major regional development policy, bringing life back to places where it may sadly have disappeared, as it is a profound source of innovation, particularly in human terms. It also complements and inspires the conventional economy. In the absence of a lucrative market – often in rural areas, or in public utility sectors such as waste, funeral services or integration through economic activity – the SSE is on hand to bring together all the stakeholders in a given area and forge a society.
In this way, it becomes a laboratory for all kinds of transitions, a permanent field of exploration and a model for corporate territorial responsibility.
It is an immense source of regional pride: Nouvelle- Aquitaine was the first region to create a division entirely dedicated to the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE). The tenth anniversary of the Hamon Law is an appropriate occasion to assess how far we have come and to set a new course in order to ramp up this vast movement; an approach which, by its very nature, accommodates the bifurcations essential to the entire economic world.
The Global SSE Forum in Bordeaux, where delegations from all over the world will be converging with the shared conviction that the SSE is a viable and humanistic economic model, compatible with planetary limits, will be the perfect opportunity to demonstrate its relevance. See you in October 2025.
Jean-Luc Gleyze
President of the Departmental
Council of Gironde
and
Sophie Piquemal
Vice-President
The major social, economic, ecological and societal transformations of the 21st century will either be collective or won’t be. Here in Gironde, we are creating a network of human and territorial solidarity in order to promote simultaneous reflection and action everywhere, in tune with local realities.
The roadmap we share with the SSE players
in Gironde enables us to carry out projects
in the general and collective interest and
to innovate based on the realities of the
territory in which we live, in contrast to a
vertical market economy that is disconnected
from realities in the field and leads to
environmental predation, withdrawal, social
exclusion and a feeling of abandonment.
Nourished by its strong local roots, this local
economy becomes a means of integration,
thanks to the sustainable jobs it creates, which cannot be relocated, and helps to
build the social fabric that is essential to the
resilience of our society.
Joining the GSEF will enable the Gironde ecosystem to benefit from the international momentum that is essential in order to enrich local social and solidarity networks in the medium and long term. Tomorrow’s economy will, first and foremost, be a grassroots economy!
In Gironde, as in the rest of the world, there can be no long-term prosperity on a planet engulfed by climatic and social disasters. In addition to our local actions, we are committed to forging links with civil society beyond our borders in order to convey the hope of a fair form of globalisation that is actively engaged at the local level.
Christine Bost
President of Bordeaux Métropole
The SSE is a breeding ground for social innovation. It is helping to make our territory an active, solidarity-oriented metropolis, and is wholly consistent with the new trajectory our local authority wishes to take.
Aware of the economic, social and environmental issues at stake, Bordeaux Métropole has created a support ecosystem for stakeholders which encourages the development of economic projects and numerous initiatives for its inhabitants and its territory.
Supported by an ambitious metropolitan policy over the last fifteen years, the SSE is playing an increasingly important role throughout our area by ensuring the existence of solidarity down to the last mile, meeting the essential needs of our fellow citizens, and providing multiple, adapted and innovative responses to social and environmental challenges.
Today, Bordeaux is delighted to continue this work by hosting the Global SSE Forum.
The commitment shared by our local authority, the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region, the Department of Gironde and the City of Bordeaux enables us to align the different strategies being implemented in order to offer our partners coordinated and complementary initiatives.
These opportunities to engage in discussion and share experiences with global players in the SSE sector will enable us to keep raising the profile of the SSE, while promoting inspiring solutions that can be disseminated throughout our territories as concrete examples of an inclusive and supportive job-creating model.
