Protection of the cooperator to be excluded through the procedure: commentary on the decision of the Coimbra Court of Appeal of 3 march 2020

Abstract

Article 25 (2) of the Cooperative Code2 requires that the imposition of any of the disciplinary sanctions provided for in paragraph 1 of the same article, must always be preceded by a written procedure. However, one cannot find in the cooperative legislation a comprehensive explanation of the concept that goes beyond its minimum application. This justifies the relevance of the judgment of the Coimbra Court of Appeal, of 3 March 2020. Under an exercise of negative delimitation, the Court concluded that a set of individual documented pieces do not form part of the concept of «procedure», which justified an analysis of the type of invalidity affecting the general assembly’s deliberation, that approved the exclusion. The commentary considers the rule’s protective nature and the rationale of imposing prior written procedure before the sanction is applied to the cooperator.