Status.

The first and only operational member Lab is Cooperativa Integral Sulitânia, CRL (NIF 518771571), a cooperative registered in Portugal under the Código Cooperativo. Headquarters at Quinta da Fornalha, 8950-186 Castro Marim, Algarve.

The cooperative was incorporated in June 2025. Activity at the site began earlier, in May 2023, by the founding members in advance of formal incorporation. The cooperative currently has 16 members of 7 nationalities, governance organs (Mesa da Assembleia Geral, Conselho de Administração, Conselho Fiscal), and a working set of regenerative practices on land owned by a member of the founding circle.

This is the legal foundation from which the federation has been articulated. Everything else on the site refers to documents, intentions, infrastructure, and direction that proceed from this cooperative outward.

Syntrociety is the federation under which member Labs gather. Its Charter (the five principles), its Practice (the eight working disciplines), and its research framework SYFERS (with two open tools at chart.syfers.eu and lens.syfers.eu) are real, written, published, and in use. What exists in writing and in practice is functional.

What does not yet exist is the federation as a separate registered legal entity. There is no Syntrociety Federation registered with a NIF, no statutes filed at a Portuguese registry, no formal Council with legal personality. These are in preparation, not in operation.

The choice is deliberate. A federation legal entity can only be formed once there is more than one member Lab to federate, and once the operational pattern between Labs is clear enough to be codified. Building a federation legal shell before there is a federation to fill it would be a paper exercise. The choice taken instead is to do the work, document it, and let the legal entity follow the practice.

Syntrociety is real as direction. As a registered entity, it is being prepared. This page exists so the distinction is plain.

For most readers of the site, the distinction does not change much. The Charter, Practice, SYFERS framework, and Heal the System publication are the federation's substantive contribution and they are real. They are read, used, cited, and built on without depending on a registered federation entity.

For a partner considering formal collaboration, the relevant legal counterpart today is Cooperativa Integral Sulitânia, CRL, not Syntrociety. Memoranda of Understanding, contracts, and funding agreements at this stage are signed by the cooperative, with a written commitment to transfer or extend the relationship to the federation entity once it is registered.

For a future member Lab, joining Syntrociety today means signing the Charter as a peer of Cooperativa Integral Sulitânia and committing to register together once the federation entity is formed. The thirty-day departure clause in the Charter applies from day one. No commitment becomes irreversible because of the federation's legal stage.

For a regulator or municipality, the federation is what it appears to be: a coalition of cooperatives forming around a common research and governance framework, with one founding cooperative currently registered and others to follow.

The federation will move from its current stage to a registered legal entity over the coming period. The schedule below is indicative; the substantive work, not the calendar, sets the pace.

• Stage 1. Now. Cooperativa Integral Sulitânia operational. Charter, Practice, SYFERS published. Federation as direction.
• Stage 2. Second member Lab signs the Charter. A second Portuguese or European cooperative adopts the Charter and joins as peer member. The federation form becomes empirically necessary.
• Stage 3. Federation legal entity registered. Statutes filed, NIF assigned, Council formally constituted, federation contributions structured. Existing Memoranda transferred to federation entity per their terms.
• Stage 4. Federation operational. Multiple member Labs, federation Council meeting on its own schedule, Friends programme running through the federation rather than through individual Labs.

Many initiatives in the federation's stage prefer to present themselves as more legally established than they are, hoping no one looks closely. The federation does not work that way. The Charter's first principle is Truth and its fourth is Openness. A federation cannot ask its members to register their practice openly while misrepresenting its own.

Publishing this page is therefore an act of consistency. The federation's commitments to truth and openness apply to the federation itself, including the parts of its existence that are still in preparation. A reader who arrives expecting a registered organisation finds a clear account of what is and what is not. That account is more credible than the alternative.

For any reader who wishes to act on this clarity, the federation is reachable through Cooperativa Integral Sulitânia. Correspondence, formal proposals, and partnership inquiries can be sent to hello@syntrociety.org or geral@sulitania.pt, and will be handled by the cooperative on behalf of the federation in formation.

This page is the federation's live legal disposition. It will be updated each time a stage above is reached. The version number and date at the top of the page indicate the most recent state.

The federation does not promise a date for any of the stages beyond Stage 1. The work runs at its own pace. What the federation does promise is that whatever this page says, on any day a reader visits, will be accurate as of that day.