Association of municipalities (Germany)

Vertical state structure of Germany

A community association in Germany is the amalgamation of at least two communities to form a corporation under public law with the purpose of performing public tasks on a larger scale within the framework of local self-government while maintaining the independence of the member communities.

General

The municipal association is a form of inter-municipal cooperation and is mentioned several times in the Basic Law , although it is used there as an indefinite legal term. The specification of the form and organization of the association to form community associations was left to the federal states, which have created their own regulations for this. These regulations (such as the law on communal community work , GkG NRW) are partly inconsistent. In the GkG NRW, for example, the community association is assumed to be known and the special purpose association is equated with the community association according to Section 5 (2) GkG NRW.

history

In § 3 of the Württemberg administrative edict of 1822 it was stipulated that every municipality had the right "to take care of all matters relating to the municipal association, to manage its municipal assets independently [...]" Here the term of the municipal association is mentioned for the first time, but is in this context to be understood as "unity of the community". For Rudolf von Gneist , in 1870 economic self-administration as well as authoritarian self-administration basically took place within the framework of municipalities and municipal associations. In 1928, Hans Peters subsumed all forms of communal self-government, including communes, under the term of the communal association. From 1945, municipalities and associations of municipalities were the first public bodies to be able to function again.

Legal issues and delimitation

Legal basis

The concept of the community association is constitutionally not legally defined and is used differently in the Basic Law. What is certain is that it includes the districts and urban districts mentioned in Article 28.1 sentence 2 of the Basic Law. The guarantee of local self-government according to Article 28, Paragraph 2, Sentence 1 of the Basic Law also applies to local authority associations, provided that their members are exclusively citizens . Due to the only admissible legal form of a corporation under public law, the municipal associations are a legal person under public law , have their own legal personality and have compulsory members . By virtue of its legal form and statutory powers, it belongs to the self-governing bodies . Its corporate status requires a statute (municipal association statute ), from which the association members (member municipalities), the organs (municipal association organs ), its association area and the regulation of its finances emerge. According to a judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court of July 1979 (it concerned the offices in Schleswig-Holstein), municipal associations are only those municipal associations that are either territorial bodies formed to perform self-government tasks or that come very close to these bodies in terms of the weight of their self-government tasks. A merely limited scope of self-administration tasks is therefore not sufficient for community associations.

Demarcation

In jurisprudence, there is only broad agreement that the districts are to be classified as municipal associations, while the special purpose associations are not included in them because of their limited tasks. The literal interpretation of the term is unproductive because it does not allow the essential characteristics of the term to be determined. It only allows conclusions to be drawn about an association of municipalities - of whatever kind. It is a typical collective term that has remained without fixed outlines even in today's legal language and jurisprudence.

The community association is to be distinguished in particular from such forms of cooperation between communities which as such do not have their own legal personality. An example of this is the public-law agreement in North Rhine-Westphalia or the agreed administrative community between municipalities in Baden-Württemberg .

species

A distinction is made depending on the position in the hierarchically structured administrative structure

Municipal associations below the district level ("lower municipal associations"),
Association of municipalities at the district level (in the case of a merger of a district and an independent city , one speaks of a municipal association of a special kind ) and
Municipal associations above the district level (also called “higher-order municipal associations” or higher municipal association ).

Depending on whether the members of a community association are citizens or communities / community associations, the community association is a direct or indirect regional authority. Municipal associations usually come into being as a voluntary association of municipalities ("free association"), but the legally enforced compulsory association is also possible. In particular, the districts (districts) are institutions created by the state with their own rights that are not derived from the municipalities.

A further classification arises with regard to the members of a community association:

The municipal association is a regional authority if its members are the individual citizens of a certain area. The right of membership of the individual citizens is expressed in particular in the election of a representative body for the area of the community association. The local authority has sovereignty , i. H. direct access to a specific area.
The municipal association is a federal body if its members are municipalities or other municipal associations of a certain district. The highest body of a federal corporation is elected by the member corporations. The federal body has no jurisdiction. Since the level of democratic legitimation is higher in the regional authorities, their responsibilities (e.g. district) are often much further drawn than those of the federal authorities (e.g. special purpose association).

tasks

The tasks of the community association must lie exclusively within the general interest . Community associations do not have their own area of responsibility (local affairs) like communities per se, but rather must be shaped in accordance with the law or the articles of association. Here, community associations usually take on supra-community or supplementary balancing tasks that an individual community cannot fulfill due to its financial and / or administrative power. That is why the establishment of community associations is intended to prevent certain community tasks from failing due to the lack of efficiency of an individual community. These tasks cannot be carried out “optimally” by the municipalities or districts, depending on their design, technical requirements, financial feasibility or historical understanding. The municipal association and the Zweckverband differ in the focus of their tasks. In the municipal association, the tasks are regularly area-related, in the special-purpose association, however, primarily object-related. The tasks are financed by the statutory contributions that are paid by its members.

Examples

Based on the above distinctions, there are the following examples of municipal associations (regional authorities, federal authorities) and other forms of municipal cooperation:

	Local authority	Federal corporation	Cooperation without legal personality
above the circle level	District (in Bavaria) with an immediately elected district day District Association of the Palatinate (in Rhineland-Palatinate) with an immediately elected District Day historical: Provincial association in the Free State of Prussia with a directly elected provincial parliament	State Welfare Association (e.g. in Hessen ) Regional Association (in North Rhine-Westphalia) Oldenburg landscape and East Frisian landscape (in Lower Saxony) Zweckverband (if above the district level)	public law agreement (including in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and North Rhine-Westphalia , if above the district level)
at district level	District (in North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein) or district (in the other territorial states) with a directly elected district council Region Hannover (in Lower Saxony) City region Aachen (in North Rhine-Westphalia) Regional Association Saarbrücken (in Saarland)
below the circle level	Verbandsgemeinde (in Brandenburg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt ) Integrated community (in Lower Saxony) historical: parish land municipality (in Schleswig-Holstein)	Office (in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Schleswig-Holstein, historically also in Prussia , North Rhine-Westphalia and other German states) Local government association (in Baden-Württemberg and Hesse) Administrative community of municipalities (in Bavaria , Thuringia and historically in Saxony-Anhalt ) Administrative association (in Saxony) Zweckverband (if below the district level)	Agreed administrative community of municipalities (in Baden-Württemberg) Administrative community of municipalities (in Hesse , Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein ) Administrative community (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania)

Municipalities and municipal associations by country

Source of community figures: lists below (as of January 1, 2012)

country	Communities	of which free of association *	Municipal associations **	Cities	independent cities °	Agricultural circles °	average population of the municipalities	average area (km²) of the municipalities
Baden-Württemberg	1.101	190	270	312	(00) 09	35	0.009,767	032.40
Bavaria	2,056	992	314	317	(00) 25th	71	0.006,099	033.11
Berlin	0.001	001	000	001	(00) 01	00	3,460,725	887.70
Brandenburg	0.419	148	053	112	(00) 04th	14th	0.005,974	070.37
Bremen	0.002	002	000	002	(00) 02	00	0.330.353	209.62
Hamburg	0.001	001	000	001	(00) 01	00	1,786,448	755.16
Hesse	0.426	426	000	189	(00) 05	21st	0.0 14,242	048.80
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania	0.783	040	078	084	(00) 02	06th	0.002,098	029.62
Lower Saxony	1.008	286	132	163	0(10) 8	38	0.007,855	045.85
North Rhine-Westphalia	0.396	396	000	270	(23) 22	31	0.045.133	086.08
Rhineland-Palatinate	2,306	048	162	128	(00) 12	24	0.001,736	008.61
Saarland	0.052	052	000	017th	00(1) 0	06th	0.019,569	049.40
Saxony	0.458	234	090	174	(00) 03	10	0.009,060	040.22
Saxony-Anhalt	0.220	103	018th	104	(00) 03	11	0.010,614	092.95
Schleswig-Holstein	1,116	080	085	063	(00) 04th	11	0.002,540	014.07
Thuringia	0.907	157	079	126	(00) 06th	17th	0.002,464	017.83
Germany	11,2520	3,1560.	1,2810.	2,0630.	(110) 10700	2950	0.007,266	031.35

* Own municipal administration - no membership in a municipal association below the district level . ( Office ( BB , MV , SH ), municipal administration association ( BW , HE ), integrated municipality ( NI ), association municipality ( RP , ST ), administrative association (SN), administrative association ( BY , SA , TH ), special-purpose associations below the district level).
** In Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Saarland there are no municipal associations below the district level.
° The three municipal associations of a special kind , the Hanover region , the Saarbrücken regional association and the Aachen city region , which belong to the German District Association, are included in the District column . The cities of Hanover, Saarbrücken and Aachen have special rights that are similar to the rights of independent cities. Even for the city of Göttingen , although it has been part of the district since 1964, the regulations for independent cities continue to apply to a large extent.

European official statistics

German municipal associations are classified by Eurostat in the European hierarchy of local authorities. They belong to LAU level 1, while municipalities belong to LAU level 2. In the case of districts and urban districts, these are assigned to NUTS level 3, because administrative districts are NUTS 2 and federal states are NUTS 1.

Web links

All politically independent municipalities in Germany (with municipal associations, rural districts and administrative districts)
Regional units in Germany
Regional units in Germany - GV100

Individual evidence

↑ Art. 28 GG, Art. 84 GG, Art. 85 GG, Art. 91e GG, Art. 93 GG, Art. 104b GG, Art. 105 GG, Art. 106 GG, Art. 107 GG, Art. 108 GG , Art. 115c GG, Art. 120 GG, Art. 134 GG, Art. 135a GG.
↑ Hans Peters (Ed.): Municipal constitution . Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-3-642-86960-0 , p. 83 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
^ Rudolf von Gneist: The Prussian district order . 1870, p. 98 ff .
↑ Hans Peters: Limits of local self-government in Prussia . 1928, p. 62 .
↑ BVerfGE 119, 331 (352f.), Online
↑ BVerfGE 52, 95 (109)
↑ Eberhard Schmidt-Aßmann, Peter Badura (ed.): Special administrative law . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-89949-195-1 , p. 117 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
↑ ^a ^b Federal Statistical Office ( Memento of the original from April 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (As of December 31, 2010) @1@ 2

[GG-1] Art. 28 GG, Art. 84 GG, Art. 85 GG, Art. 91e GG, Art. 93 GG, Art. 104b GG, Art. 105 GG, Art. 106 GG, Art. 107 GG, Art. 108 GG , Art. 115c GG, Art. 120 GG, Art. 134 GG, Art. 135a GG.

[2] Hans Peters (Ed.): Municipal constitution . Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-3-642-86960-0 , p. 83 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

[3] Rudolf von Gneist: The Prussian district order . 1870, p. 98 ff .

[4] Hans Peters: Limits of local self-government in Prussia . 1928, p. 62 .

[5] BVerfGE 119, 331 (352f.), Online

[6] BVerfGE 52, 95 (109)

[7] Eberhard Schmidt-Aßmann, Peter Badura (ed.): Special administrative law . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-89949-195-1 , p. 117 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

[destatis-8] Federal Statistical Office ( Memento of the original from April 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (As of December 31, 2010) @1@ 2