Inter-municipal cooperation

Every municipality has the right to carry out its tasks and duties on its own responsibility. This means that each municipality can decide for itself whether it wants to carry out tasks itself through third parties or in cooperation with other municipalities. Challenges such as demographic change and the crisis in state and municipal finances mean that inter-municipal cooperation is becoming increasingly important for municipalities. In order to obtain a complete picture of inter-municipal cooperation this paper first explains the term outlines the legal provisions describes the possible forms of organisation and provides a brief overview of the current application of IMC in municipalities. But what are the reasons for the success or failure of inter-municipal cooperation? How satisfied are local authorities with IMC? This paper refers to a study to gain a better insight into the expectations of local authorities regarding inter-municipal cooperation but also regarding their respective partner municipalities.