La Lega Nazionale is an Italian

co-operative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-control ...

association founded in 1891 on

irredentist Irredentism is usually understood as a desire that one state annexes a territory of a neighboring state. This desire is motivated by ethnic reasons (because the population of the territory is ethnically similar to the population of the parent sta ...

ideals. It grew out of The Federation of Italian Co-operatives, formed in 1886 with 248 co-ops representing 74,000 members. Following the 1992 Italian cooperative legal reform, which was lobbied for by La Lega, La Lega introduced capital participation in ownership by minority ''soci sovventori'', capital memberships, with restricted

voting rights Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in representative democracy, public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally i ...

. La Lega is Italy's largest

umbrella group An umbrella organization is an association of (often related, industry-specific) institutions who work together formally to coordinate activities and/or pool resources. In business, political, and other environments, it provides resources and ofte ...

for collectives, promoting the interests of the cooperative sector at all levels of government. La Lega (or Legacoop) covers more than 17,000 cooperatives, including 5,000 worker co-ops, 3,000 agricultural co-ops, 2,000 consumer co-ops and 5,000 housing co-ops. By 2002, La Lega's total membership exceeded 6 million people, or slightly more than 10 percent of the Italian population. Of these members, 4.6 million belonged to La Lega's consumer co-ops.

External links

Official Website

References

Cooperatives in Italy {{Italy-stub