Baturina, Danijel, Agolli, Ariola, Haska, Erila, Kiss, Julianna, Mihály, Melinda, Bashevska, Marija, Korunovska Srbijanko, Jana, Lisetchi, Nicolae, Mihai, Bibu Nicolae, Rakin, Dina, and Radojičić, Vladimir.
Growing recognition of the role social enterprise in Europe have fostered interest in social enterprise across Europe (ICF, 2014), but the question is what is developmental status in CEE countries. Comparative analysis, have shown that when compared to western EU, social enterprises in CEE&SEE are less developed, more invisible and unrecognized (Galera, 2016 ; ICF, 2014). Their role appears to be marginal (Borgaza, et., al.2008) when compared to Western countries. As the specific theme, the forms and methods of financing are crucial for the development of social entrepreneurship initiatives. Access to financing (European Commission, 2011. ; ICF, 2014) has been identified as a key issue to be addressed and additional support and the development of new forms of financing is expected. In particular, this is the case at the beginning of the development of the sector as it is generally the case in Central and Eastern European countries. Social entrepreneurship is characterized by hybridity. In their development sector relies on different types of financing of the primary economic activity, (Di Domenico, et.al., 2010. ; Austin, et., al, 2006) from public money (from either national or local level) to different types of investments and donations. One of the sources of funding that had significance in the sector development in Central and Eastern Europe is certainly the external financing of international organizations and the EU. For example, Czech, Poland and Croatian ICSEM working papers (Dohnalová, et.al. 2015 ; Ciepielewska-Kowalik, et.al.2015 ; Vidović and Baturina, 2016.) in a way highlight that EU funds and other external finance had the significant role in developing social enterprises in the respective countries. The main idea behind this work is to investigate the role and meaning of external financing for the development of the social entrepreneurship sector in CEE by means of comparative analysis of six countries, Albania, Croatia, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. The main research question is what was the role and importance of external financing in the development of the social entrepreneurship sector in stated countries. In a way, this paper would attempt to discuss what is the relevance and embeddedness of initiatives launched by external funding in a specific tradition and development of a concept of social entrepreneurship in the CEE countries. In doing so we may take into account the past experience of the wider third sector with international/external funding sources. The methodological approach used in the paper includes desk research. Desk research, as a method of collecting data from existing resources, included the collection of secondary data based on available documents, reports, studies, strategies, etc., related to social entrepreneurship. The methodology would possible be supplemented by semi-structured interviews with experts in particular countries and data from ICSEM International Survey on Social Enterprise. This paper is one of the transversal analyses within International Comparative Social Enterprise Models (ICSEM) project.