「협동조합기본법」상 조합원 수 요건의 비교법적 고찰

In a rapidly changing social structure with aging population, disappearance of local communities, decrease in the youth population, retirees, and start-ups, cooperatives are playing a very important role as social and economic organizations based on local communities. As issues related to cooperatives, such as disappearance of local communities and decrease in population, it is necessary to reexamine the appropriateness of the requirements for cooperative members required in the cooperative establishment report under the Cooperatives Basic Act. When compared with the cooperative regulations under the Civil and Commercial Act and the cooperative establishment requirements of major foreign countries, it is necessary to discuss whether the current cooperative member regulations required for cooperative establishment are appropriate. Korea currently requires a minimum of five members when establishing general cooperatives and social cooperatives, which is a factor that restricts creative and experimental cooperative establishment in the early stages of establishment. This study determined that realistic improvements in domestic standards for cooperative members are necessary through a comparative study with the establishment standards for civil law partnerships (two or more persons), commercial law limited partnerships (two or more persons), and overseas cooperatives (generally three or more persons) in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada. Therefore, by introducing a differential application of the number of members or a pilot application system (regulatory sandbox) to ease institutional entry barriers to cooperative establishment and to create a sustainable cooperative ecosystem, it aims to contribute to enhancing the role of the social economy sector and securing sustainability by resolving balanced social issues.