In recent years, the social economy is most often understood as coming out of social economy entities outside and directing activity on beneficiaries and a group of clients that are not directly members of the organization - it is called the new social economy. These organizations using social employment instruments are active at inclusion field through socio-professional reintegration of their beneficiaries.
At the same time, social exclusion has become one of the most important social issues that must be solved in the European Union. It means excluding from the generally accepted model of social life individuals or entire social groups. The reason may be poverty, unemployment, national origin, religion, disability and many other reasons indicating belonging to some kind of minority. Social exclusion applies to all countries, not just less developed because its cause are all kinds of inequalities that underlie discriminatory practices. The problem of social exclusion has been increasing since 2008, ie since the beginning of the global economic crisis. In 2013, every fourth inhabitant of the EU was at risk of social exclusion due to indicators adopted in the Europe 2020 Strategy, and in some countries, such as Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and Latvia, the situation was even worse.
Social inclusion, which is striving for inclusion into the social life of people affected by exclusion, is an important element of European politics since the late 80s. Currently is reflected in the Europe 2020 Strategy, which subtitle and priorities refers to inclusive growth. Implementation of the strategy in this area is difficult, because the traditional tools of social policy, not very well cope with social inclusion. The difficulties stem from the fact that many activities which are intended to counteract exclusion had caused a kind of stigma on beneficiaries, which instead of helping, resulted in a deepening of the problem of social exclusion.
Lately it has been indicated that an effective policy to combat social exclusion should involve cooperation of the three sectors: public, private and non-governmental. An important role should be also assigned to social economy entities, which operate on the border between these three sectors. So the most important seem to be social economy entities for purposes of reintegration, including social cooperatives. These types of organizations can be used as instrument of active social policy and active labor market policy.