Statutory city (Austria)

A statutory city (or city with its own statute ) in Austria is a city that is distinguished from the other municipalities by its own state statute (or city law ), which regulates the questions that are regulated for the other municipalities in the municipal code. A second peculiarity is that these cities do not belong to a political district administered by a district authority , but that the mayor acts as a district administrative authority . There are currently 15 Austrian cities with their own statute ( Vienna , which is also a federal state, is a special case).

Organization and competencies

Legal basis

Eisenstadt

Graz

innsbruck

Klagenfurt am Wörthersee

Waidhofen
an der
Ybbs

catfish

Vienna

Wiener
Neustadt

All 15 statutory cities in Austria

In Austria, all municipalities are organized in the same way on the basis of the federal constitution , regardless of whether the municipality is a large industrial city or a small agricultural municipality. This fiction of the unified community could not be upheld for the cities with their own statute, some of which already had special rights under the monarchy.

Pursuant to Art. 116 Para. 3 B-VG , a municipality with more than 20,000 inhabitants is to be given its own statute by provincial law at its request, if this does not endanger the interests of the state. Such a legal resolution could only be announced until January 31, 2019 with the consent of the federal government. This provision was introduced by the municipal constitution amendment in 1962. Statutory cities that already existed, especially those with less than 20,000 inhabitants, namely Eisenstadt , Waidhofen an der Ybbs and Rust , remained. So all previously existing statutory cities were transferred, the only granting of a new statute took place before the entry into force of Art. 116 Para. 3 B-VG: on January 1, 1964 for Wels .

Statutory cities are generally populous cities with supra-regional importance. For example, all regional capitals except Bregenz are cities with their own statutes. Vorarlberg is the only federal state without a statutory city.

The statutory cities are to be distinguished from the municipalities , which have no special legal status other than the title city.

Legal specifics

The cities with their own statute have legal peculiarities compared to the uniform municipalities. This is first of all its own city law (statute) as a special organization law in which the state legislature can give the city a tailor-made constitution. For example, the statutes for Linz , Wels and Steyr, compared to the Upper Austrian municipal code, have a much less strict municipal supervision by the state of Upper Austria, additional organs such as the magistrate and the individual members of the city senate and a completely different system of jurisdiction.

In the cities with their own statute which is an auxiliary body of magistrates set up with the city manager as a conductor. The magistrate director must have completed a law degree. He is constitutionally responsible for internal ministry. This means that he has management and instruction powers in matters relating to the organization of human resources and material resources and provisions for the uniform and regulated course of business (see, for example, Section 37 Paragraph 3 Statute for the State Capital Linz 1992), without having to act directly with the mayor Having to consult the board of the magistrate. In exercising this management function, however, no rights or obligations may be established or modified (area of non-standard administrative acts of internal administrative organization).

Another difference is that, by virtue of the constitution, no district authority is responsible for cities with their own statute , but the mayor is entrusted with the execution of certain district administrative tasks in the assigned sphere of activity. He is therefore - like the district captain for unitary municipalities - responsible for approving operating facilities and carrying out certain administrative criminal proceedings.

With the exception of the cities of Krems and Waidhofen an der Ybbs , in cities with their own statute, the state police departments act as the 1st instance security authority. This has nothing to do directly with the status as statutory city, since on the one hand the cities mentioned are exempt from this regulation and the state police departments also act as the first instance security authority in the municipalities of Leoben and Schwechat . The security authority of the first instance is responsible in particular for the enforcement of the Security Police Act, the right of assembly, the law of associations and the law on weapons.

With the exception of the statutory cities of Rust, Waidhofen an der Ybbs and Vienna, all statutory cities are the seat of at least one district administration of a neighboring district, in Linz there are two with the district administration Linz-Land and Urfahr-Umgebung .

history

The oldest statutory cities are:

Graz (state capital of Styria ),
Klagenfurt (state capital of Carinthia ),
Innsbruck (regional capital of Tyrol ) and until 1919 also:
- Bolzano ,
- Trento and
- Rovereto ,
Linz (state capital of Upper Austria ),
Salzburg , as well
Vienna (federal capital of Austria),

all of which were given their own statute as early as 1850, if they had not had one for a long time.

The Burgenland cities of Eisenstadt and Rust had been defined as Hungarian free cities since the 17th century.
The youngest statutory city is Wels in Upper Austria (since January 1, 1964): The city was given its own statute in connection with the municipal constitution amendment in 1962, but before it came into force.

The award years and processes are given in the list of cities in detail.

Many municipalities that are not statutory cities now have more than 20,000 inhabitants. However, there are no applications for a statute to be granted. In the past, this was certainly one of the reasons that taking care of the district administrative tasks in the financial equalization system was insufficiently compensated.

In 2014, the non-partisan citizens' platform “Kernraumfusion” attempted to create a new city through the merger of nine Styrian communities in the Voitsberg district , which should also acquire the status of a statutory city. Likewise, in the course of the dissolution of the Vienna-Umgebung district at the end of 2016, the conversion of the city of Klosterneuburg to a statutory city, among other options, was up for discussion, but was not implemented.

The Austrian Association of Cities , which they finance, acts as a representation of the interests of the cities and larger municipalities - including the statutory cities .

list

* City:	name of the city
* Coat of arms:	City arms
* Vehicle:	License Plate
* State:	State name
* Map:	The location of the city in Austria
* Pop .:	Inhabitants (as of January 1, 2020)
* Fl. (km²):	Area in square kilometers (as of 2016)
* Density (Ew / km²):	Number of inhabitants per square kilometer
* Since:	Year of grant of the statute and source for it
* GKZ:	Official community key (community code)
* Image:	A picture from the city