Europäisches Zentrum für Föderalismus-Forschung

Europäische Länderberichte

Schweden im Umbruch: Endgültige Vorschläge zur Regionenreform

Marie-Louise von Bergmann-Winberg

S. 393-406

After a period of 40 years with several committees for the construction of a regional level in Sweden, there was a final report in February 2007, with a dual goal-setting: to create a regional level  regionkommuner - with certain autonomy and direct elections, and secondly to harmonise the central authorities on the regional level. According to the premises of the Svegfors-committee, the task is to create between six and nine regions, with one or two million inhabitants, and with a regional hospital with all needed specialties and a university with strong research funding. The regions are also to be founded on the basis of labour markets regions as they will appear in the year 2030, and furthermore the inhabitants are to have feelings of belongingness, i.e. regional identity and legitimacy. The central harmonization should encompass 500 authorities and 38 regional maps, in order to correspond with the new regionkommuner. Primarily, this could be perceived as both a top-down and a bottom-up process simultaneously, as the initiative and the central directions are formed by the state, but the municipalities are to match each other in the region-building process.

Zitiervorschlag für diesen Artikel:
von Bergmann-Winberg, Marie-Louise 2008: Schweden im Umbruch: Endgültige Vorschläge zur Regionenreform, in: Europäisches Zentrum für Föderalismus-Forschung (Hrsg.): Jahrbuch des Föderalismus 2008. Föderalismus, Subsidiarität und Regionen in Europa, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, S. 393-406.