GOLD Report I - UCLG

EUROPE148United Cities and Local GovernmentsThe mostimportantvariations relatingto powers andresponsibilitiesoccur in the fieldsof education,health, and socialsecurityor benefitscentral state. Exceptions are countrieswhere a separate state administration hasbeen re-established or maintained in somedomains at the local level. The “powersand responsibilities for specific purposes”are then predominant in the mission oflocal government, and can effectively keeplocal authorities in the position of beingagents of the state. This is the case, forexample, at the regional level in the CzechRepublic. Because the resources providedto local authorities are hardly enough tofinance the tasks delegated to them by thestate, there is little time or occasion forlocal bodies to exercise their autonomy.A more detailed study of the systemgoverning local powers and responsibilitiesalso raises the question of how relevantsome commonly held distinctionsare. Basic powers and responsibilities arealways regulated by law wherever theyaffect domains or tasks that have a nationaldimension (and are therefore mandatory).What then determines the degree oflocal autonomy are the fine details and thescope of the pertinent legal regulations. Inextreme cases the regulations can makethe system governing such functionsalmost indistinguishable from the systemgoverning delegated tasks. Such a situationled to reforms undertaken in the Nordiccountries in the 1980s. These reformswere often grouped under the term of“free municipality,” and their aim wasreducing the heavy burden of nationalregulations and financial controls on localgovernments. In some countries thecourts occasionally can ensure that regulationsrespect the rights of self-governmentby censuring provisions deemed toexceed the stated aims of the regulations,as in Germany, but such judicial intercessionis unusual.III.2.2. FunctionsRegarding functions effectively exercised inapplication of the law, we will limit our studyto the level of municipalities and their consortia.A detailed comparison reveals thatcertain tasks are carried out by local councilsor their consortia in virtually all Europeancountries. Providing a slight variation, Portugaldelegates these tasks to sub-divisions ofthe local councils. These local tasks typicallyinclude: town planning (urban planning,planning permission, development projects),the allocation of social benefits and the managementof social institutions for certaincategories of the population, particularly forthe elderly. They also include roads andpublic transport, water distribution (with thenotable exception of England), accommodationand housing (with the notable exceptionof the Netherlands, Italy and Switzerland),and the construction and maintenance ofschool buildings. These days we can add tothis list education support in all countries,along with actions for economic development,that can be carried out also throughpowers that are not specifically deemed tothis function, when they are not listed by thelaw. Together, these tasks can be consideredthe common substance of local powers andresponsibilities in Europe.The most important variations relating topowers and responsibilities occur in thefields of education, health, and socialsecurity or benefits. Broadly, local governmentsby national law are responsiblefor such services in the Nordic countriesand to a large extent in the United Kingdom.As of this year, regional authoritiesin Denmark have overall management ofhealthcare and the health insurancesystem, which had previously been run toa great extent by the counties. In Sweden,social security is managed at thenational level, but the counties run thehospitals and the healthcare system. InGermany, France, Italy and Spain, on theother hand, local governments exerciseonly partial or marginal powers and responsibilitiesin these areas. The sameapplies to education: the recruitment andmanagement of staff is generally the taskof state or regional authorities. This is aduty of German and Austrian Länder, ofthe autonomous communities of Spainand in Belgian communautés. In the Nor-