Merger Municipality

A merger municipality is an administrative and governance entity created by the merger of several municipalities or communities that previously own administration and government owned.

A good example of such fusion municipalities has been in Belgium where in the 1970s in several steps small congregations joined together in order to facilitate the administration quickly. There were previously too many municipalities per person and by reducing the number of merger came back some budget to the Belgian budget. A minimum population of 8,000 inhabitants was provided by administrative and political entities.Still, there are a number of counties, especially in the rural areas, which do not reach that number.

In Belgium, the mergers were carried out almost at once, while in Netherlands were spread.

An example of an amalgamated municipality is the Kempen town Lille consisting of four former municipalities or districts which had previously had their own governance, namely: Lille , Poederlee , Gierle andWechelderzande . In another example, the amalgamated municipality has a new name, which previously did not exist as borough existed. Thus Zwalm a fusion of less than 13 cores: Beerlegem, Dikkele, Hermelgem, Hundelgem, Meilegem, Munkzwalm, Nederzwalm, Paulatem, Roborst, Rozebeke, Sint-Blasius-Boekel, Saint-Denis-Boekel and Sint-Maria-Latem.

Against the mergers of the 1970s was a lot of protest, because either the residents prefer retained their own government or because they were not properly reclassification of the administrative and managerial units and they were rather merged with another municipality.

Some urban areas were granted an extension to realize the merger: Antwerp about 10 years (the merger happened in 1983) and Brussels undetermined.

In mergers of suburbs of a big city with the city itself, came much protest, partly because the people after the merger went to hear a municipality where the municipal tax was often higher than in their native town.

In the years following the merger were some political groups in favor of a return to the old situation: DEFUSION called. However, this is slowly died down and certainly never formed a large flow.

See also [ edit ]

 * Municipal reorganization
 * Municipal reorganization in Netherlands
 * Fusion of the communes