The (in)sufficiency of the right to reimbursement in Portugal. The particular study of wine cooperatives in the Douro demarcated region
Abstract
This study intends to demonstrate that the changes introduced in the legal regime of the right to reimbursement, in the Portuguese Cooperative Code reform of 2015, are not sufficient to remove the accounting qualification of cooperative share capital as a debt. This qualification stems from the subjection of cooperatives to international accounting standards, with particular reference to IAS 32. The practical relevance of this issue is demonstrated by an empirical study that analyses the effects that the application of the current accounting treatment for cooperatives has on wine cooperatives in the Douro Demarcated Region. It concludes by advocating a legislative intervention that allows the cooperatives to be subject to a specific and differentiated accounting treatment, respecting the variability of share capital, resulting from the right to reimbursement of contributions in case of withdraw of the cooperator, under the cooperative principle of voluntary and open membership.
Received: 29 November 2016
Accepted: 01 September 2017
Published online: 22 December 2017
Downloads
Last update: 29/06/2026
The authors are advised to read their rights carefully. We believe this approach ensures a fair agreement for both parties. These instructions should be read in conjunction with the Ethical Guidelines and the Open Access Policy, Licensing Terms and Copyright of the journal "Boletín de la Asociación Internacional de Derecho Cooperativo (BAIDC)".
1. Authorship and Ethics
By submitting their manuscripts to Boletín de la Asociación Internacional de Derecho Cooperativo (BAIDC), the authors accept and undertake to comply with the conditions of publication without the need to sign an additional transfer agreement with the Publisher (University of Deusto). In doing so, they guarantee that their work is unpublished in any form, original, and does not breach BAIDC’s Ethical Guidelines or the rights of third parties, and that no licences have been or will be granted that are incompatible with the rights granted to the Publisher.
The authors assume full and exclusive responsibility for the content of the study and formally declare that they have no conflicts of interest that affect the integrity of the research.
2. Publisher’s Rights
By submitting the manuscript, the authors agree to its publication under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. Consequently, they grant the Publisher the exclusive, royalty-free and worldwide right of first publication, editing, layout and exploitation of the article. This grant authorises the Publisher to distribute, sub-license and index the work in any format, medium, database or institutional repository, for the purposes of promotion and scientific dissemination.
3. Copyright
The authors retain the intellectual property rights to their article and retain the right to distribute and use their work for teaching purposes, future research or personal archiving, provided that the original publication in the Journal is cited. They are also permitted to republish in other media, provided that a (foot)note is included with the full reference to BAIDC (including the DOI, where available) and no explicit endorsement of the Journal and/or Publisher is implied.
4. Open access
BAIDC is an open-access journal; this means that it is freely and fully accessible in its entirety immediately upon publication of its content. However, in accordance with the licence mentioned above, the authors of the articles must always be properly cited; and both commercial use and any modification intended for distribution will require the express prior written permission of the rights holder.
More details are available under the section “Open Access Policy, Licensing Terms and Copyright”.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
1.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
