Statutory city
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A statutory city (German: Statutarstadt in Austria, or Czech: Statutární město in the Czech Republic) is a municipal corporation with town privileges of city status, which also accomplishes tasks on an intermediate level of administration. Statutory cities therefore are not incorporated into the Austrian or Czech districts resp., but form urban districts in their own right.
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Austria [edit]
According to the Constitution of Austria, a city can request this status if it has more than 20,000 inhabitants. After the state government and the Federal Government agree to grant the status, it is granted as long as it does not endanger any national interests.
The state capitals of Graz, Klagenfurt and Innsbruck were elevated to statutory cities by the Austrian Emperor as early as in 1850. However, there are even smaller Statutarstädte that were previously granted this right for historical reasons, like the cities of Eisenstadt and Rust, which until World War I belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary as royal free cities and retained their own city statutes upon the incorporation of the Burgenland region into the Republic of Austria in 1921. The statutory cities were called urban areas and were treated as Stadtkreise according to the Deutsche Gemeindeordnung during the period of the Anschluss to Nazi Germany from 1938 to 1945, though, as such, were given no power over their own municipal constitution.
Besides local administration, the responsibilities of a statutory city are to manage the Bezirk (English: district), which places the Statutarstadt besides the municipal office as district administration authorities. The mayor is the head of the municipality as well as the head of the district administrative authority. The only town that applied for elevation to the status of a Statutarstadt since World War II is Wels, as equalization payments for the handling of additional tasks were inadequate so far. The present-day statutory cities comprise all Austrian state capitals, except for Bregenz.
There currently are fifteen Statutarstädte in Austria:
- Eisenstadt (since 1921, Hungarian royal free city from 1648)
- Rust (since 1921, Hungarian royal free city from 1681)
- Klagenfurt (since 1850)
- Villach (since 1932)
- Krems (since 1938)
- St. Pölten (since 1922)
- Waidhofen an der Ybbs (since 1868)
- Wiener Neustadt (since 1866)
- Graz (since 1850)
- Innsbruck (since 1850)
- Salzburg (since 1869)
- Vienna (since 1850)
Czech Republic [edit]
There is a very similar model in the Czech Republic (derived from its origin in Austria-Hungary), where there are 25 statutory cities defined by law no. 128/2000 Coll.,[1] in addition to Prague, the capital city which is a de facto statutory city. Statutory cities in the Czech Republic are:
Prague (de facto)
Other countries [edit]
- A similar concept in Germany is called Stadtkreis or Kreisfreie Stadt, but these cities, such as Munich, do not have a municipal constitution - they use the Gemeindeordnung, a state law differing from Bundesland to Bundesland.
- Several cities in Poland are vested with the administrative rights of a powiat district, therefore called miasta na prawach powiatu or powiat grodzki (city district).
- In the English-speaking world, especially in the U.S. state of Virginia, a similar concept is known as independent city or as unitary authority in the United Kingdom.
References [edit]
- This article incorporates information from the equivalent article on the German Wikipedia.
