This paper compares the profitability of European cooperative banks with that of non-cooperative banks over the period 2005-2014 using the generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM). We consider traditional measures of bank performance which are: return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and net interest margin (NIM). Even if these measures are not adapted to cooperative banks, they remain the most used in the literature. Our results show that cooperative banks are no more or less performant than the rest of banks when the entire period is considered. However, the sovereign debt crisis in Europe had a relatively greater effect on the performance of cooperative banks as a whole, unlike the 2008 crisis. Conversely, systemic co-operative banks appear to be relatively more performant during the sovereign debt crisis. However, no distinction is made between systemic cooperative banks and other banks during the 2008 financial crisis.