Balancing democracy, identity and efficiency. Changes in local and regional structures in Europe.

This publication gives an overall view of the current situation in local and regional structures across Europe.

On 1 October 2008 CEMR organised, in partnership with Local Government Denmark and Danish Regions, a seminar on changes in local and regional structures in Europe, at which a number of CEMR’s member associations introduced recent or proposed changes in their country or regions.

The idea of the seminar stemmed from the fact that over the last decade or so, many European countries have embarked on internal reforms including reducing or increasing the number of municipalities as well as granting their local and regional governments more competences.

The main purpose of the seminar was to look at how these reforms in different parts of our continent affect the balance between democracy, identity and efficiency. For example, often the purpose of creating fewer but larger municipalities is to enhance efficiency and effectiveness based on a larger territorial and population base for delivering services. But do such changes have an adverse impact on local people’s sense of identity, and thus weaken the link between the citizen and his or her local authority? Do these changes therefore have an adverse impact on local democracy?

In the course of the seminar, it became obvious that across Europe local authorities are under increasing financial and
demographic pressure to provide more services in a more cost effective way, and that in a number of countries, central governments are seeking to intervene in an increasingly top-down manner.

But the way reforms are planned and implemented is also important; as one of the speakers put it, though the reform
process somewhat strengthened local government, it was too much a top-down process with central government putting too much emphasis on efficiency. In the end, local democracy was completely forgotten in the reform; and the parliament is free to interfere far too much in purely local issues which are not its business!

The Copenhagen seminar brought together over 100 participants from 20 countries; it was also intended to give input to CEMR’s General Assembly on 22-24 April 2009 in Malmö, which – under the general theme “Fit for the Future?” – also looked at the pressures and changes confronting Europe’s local and regional governments.

This publication is a compilation of background papers prepared by the various speakers. The first was prepared by
Dexia, who produce many studies and reports on local government issues in Europe; the paper gives an overall view
of the current situation in local and regional structures across Europe.

It is followed by study cases from Northern Europe where far-reaching reforms are underway or have been only recently completed, including the host country, Denmark. The next set of presentations focuses on France and the
United Kingdom; with a similar population, France has around 36,000 municipalities and the UK only 450! The third
group looks at issues in countries with federal or quasi federal structures (Germany, Belgium, Spain).

Finally, Professor Wollmann, with his unsurpassed knowledge of Europe's different systems of local government, drew conclusions from the current patchwork of reforms and structures in Europe.

CEMR: Malmö Final Declaration and Resolution, April 2009 http://www.ccre.org/docs/malmo_declaration_en.pdf

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