Local authority (Germany)

A regional authority in Germany is a public corporation that has territorial sovereignty over a spatially delimited part of the national territory .

Local authority criteria

Local authorities have the following common criteria:

Compulsory membership

All citizens and resident companies residing in the delimited area of ​​a regional authority are compulsory members of the regional authority as soon as they move their domicile or legal seat there.

Sovereignty

The local authority is entitled in their territory because of their jurisdiction a legal system to adopt, which entitles the resident citizens and businesses and commits. Territorial sovereignty is the right to act in relation to those who are present in the area concerned.

Co-determination

In each regional authority, organs for decision-making and participation are to be formed by the persons belonging to the area. The organs of the local authority are determined by the citizens through elections . The local authority organizes independently.

Public law

As a corporation under public law, the regional authority is subject to the legal system that regulates the relationship between public authorities (regional authorities and public companies ) and private law subjects (natural or legal persons under private law).

What is essential is the direct relationship that exists between people, areas and sovereign power.

overview

A regional authority is an organizational unit to which individual tasks are assigned for a specific part of the national territory. The tasks and limits of the regional authorities are regulated by constitutional law (see constitution ). Their way of working below the state level is characterized by self-organization and local self-administration , which its own organs (e.g. mayor , local council ) carry out within the scope of the tasks assigned to them. In contrast to other municipal bodies such as the office , the regional authority has a directly elected representative body.

Parts of the national territory can be assigned to different regional authorities at different levels at the same time. The best example of this are the local authorities in the municipality and district .

In the national accounts (VGR), the finances of the regional authorities, understood here as “federal government”, “states” and “municipalities”, are summarized ( aggregated ). Together with social security , the local authorities form the “State” sector.

Local authorities are public clients in the sense of public procurement law .

Local authorities are in Germany

• the entire state ( federal ),
• the states ( countries ),
• additionally the districts in Bavaria and the district association Pfalz in Rhineland-Palatinate,
• in the territorial states: the rural districts or districts (including urban districts or urban districts ),
• Municipal associations of a special kind that are equivalent to the districts (regional districts) ,
• the municipalities including the cities,
• the association communities in Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt .

No regional authorities are:

• the administrative districts , governments or district governments, the regional directorate of Saxony or other institutions of a three-tier state administration,
• the agreed administrative communities in Baden-Württemberg,
• the administrative communities in Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein
• the public law agreements in North Rhine-Westphalia,
• the city ​​districts , municipal districts, local districts or all types of districts;
• No regional authorities, but public corporations are all higher municipal associations (HKV) not listed as regional authorities :
  • in Baden-Württemberg the municipal association for youth and social affairs
  • the Association of Bavarian Districts ,
  • the State Welfare Association Hessen in Hessen,
  • the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Municipal Social Association ,
  • the landscapes and landscape associations in Lower Saxony ,
  • the Landschaftsverbände in North Rhine-Westphalia ( Rheinland (LVR) and Westphalia lip (LWL) and the National Association lip ),
  • the regional association Ruhr in North Rhine-Westphalia,
  • the municipal social association of Saxony in Saxony;
• no regional authorities, but also corporations under public law are also all other municipal associations not listed above :
  • the administrative communities in Bavaria and Thuringia ,
  • the offices ,
  • the municipal administration associations in Baden-Württemberg,
  • the administrative associations in Saxony
  • the regional associations ,
  • other special-purpose associations ;
• other statistical units such as B. all other NUTS and Local Administrative Units (LAU) of the EU .

Remarks

1. ^ M. Borchmann, D. Breithaupt, G. Kaiser: Kommunalrecht in Hessen . W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-555-01352-1 , p. 51 ( partial view on google books ).
2. ↑ BVerfG, DVBl. 1980, 52, 54
3. ↑ In political and administrative science, states and member states are generally not viewed as regional authorities, especially since they belong to the direct state administration and have to be viewed in a legally different way from the other bodies under public law.