Confcooperative Federsolidarietà is the main national federation of social co-operatives, counting more than 6.200 associates, with about 220.000 individual members, more than 230.000 workers, out of whom 16.000 are disadvantaged workers (people with physical and mental disabilities, drug and alcohol addicts, prisoners and ex-prisoners). Federsolidarietà was the active promoter of the Italian law on social cooperatives approved in 1991 (law n.381/1991), the international normative model for the sector applied by several countries. He also contributed actively to the Third Sector and Social Enterprise reform of 2017. Federsolidarietà is active at European and international level, promoting and gaining a growing recognition of the social economy: the Social Business Initiative and the Europe 2020 strategy, the Strasbourg-Rome-Luxembourg conferences on social economy and social enterprises, the European Directive on public procurement and concessions are among the most recent acknowledgements.