Can the country government dismiss the government of a NUTS-1 (or whatever NUTS is the biggest) in your country?
June 6, 2025
What about the same question, but shifted lower? Can the government of NUTS-1 dismiss the government of a NUTS-2 beneath them?
19 comments
It’s one of the (many) things that has to be fixed in Russia. We’re nominally a federation, but the president is free to dismiss any governor (and used to be able to appoint them as well). And since 2024 a governor is able to dismiss local mayors.
The mechanism exists for the government to intervene those governments (and it’s been used) but it requires both the executive (government) and legislative (Senate) to agree; and that nuts-1 government must be breaking the constitution or be doing something very against the interests of the countries. Ofc this could be challenged on the constitutional court.
No absolutely not. The German Länder are their own semi-sovereign republics with parliaments and governments in which the federal level has no say.
There is an article in the German constitution that gives the federal level the right to intervene by force if a state refuses to execute a federal law but in 75 years this has never been applied in practice and would be pretty unthinkable.
Governors of states are appointed by the current government. Though, individual states have little power, unlike what was meant to be in Russia.
Though of course legislatures are still democratically elected, which have speakers, and which pass laws. That just can’t be challenged by any government.
NUTS are only statistical divisions, they are not administrative or governmental divisions of territory. They can coincide, but don’t have to. But I get what you are asking. And the answer is generally no, but it depends.
In Germany, the federal government has no authority over country governments while the the land can abolish or restructure administrative regions, but that requires a whole procedure. Also they cannot simply dismiss a mayor or anything like that.
In Spain, the central government does have the power to dismiss the governments of the autonomous communities (CCAA such as Catalonia, Andalusia etc.), but this is an emergency power, used for example in 2017 on Catalonia. Governments of CCAA have no power to dismiss a provincial government.
In France and Italy the central government can dismiss regional and local councils under some circumstances.
It really depends on whether the lower sub-unit of the state has a charter of autonomy or is just an administrative arm of the of the greater whole and every member country of the EU is going to be slightly different. As for the EU… it has no such power.
Only about half of the regions in the UK have regional governments (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London.) Theoretically the central government can dissolve the regional governments and have direct rule, but in practice, this doesn’t happen unless there is a crisis like in NI in 2022. In this case the structures were kept in place, but the executive was left vacant.
No. They are elected by the state parliament/municipal council. State parliament can be disolved by the federal president at the request of the federal government, which needs approval in both chambers of the federal parliament. This would result in new state elections.
NUTS-1 regions are just the country divided into four parts (west, south, east and north) so they don’t have a government.
NUTS-2 are the provinces. The government of those cannot be dismissed even by themselves so also not by the national government.
No, the national government cannot dismiss the government of either the first level (regional) or second level (municipal) governments. Because the public representatives in both the regions and the municipalities are publicly elected by the inhabitants of of each region and municipality, in the same way as the national parliament and government is publicly elected. In fact, regional and municipal elections are held on the very same day as the national elections. They all hold exactly the same legitimacy.
I had to look up what that meant, and as far as I can tell, it means states/provinces and other subdivisions. This reply is based on that understanding
No, the government doesn’t have that authority here. The two autonomous territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands are, well, autonomous and Copenhagen can’t just say “we don’t like you, get lost” to their devolved governments. Denmark itself is divided into five regions, each with an elected regional council and chair of the council. But these are more administrative units than anything and few things are actually decided on a region level. These cannot be fired by the government either
NUTS-1 and NUTS-2 regions serve statistical purposes only, therefore have no governmental bodies. NUTS-3 regions are basically the counties + Budapest city.
Counties have councils, the members of the councils are elected on local elections, and the presidents of the councils are elected by the council members, so they cannot be removed by county governments. In reality, these councils have little to no purpose as they don’t have budgets on their own. I am not sure if anybody would notice if they would cease to exist.
In Budapest, however, there is an important council and a directly elected mayor (in fact, the mayor of Budapest has the greatest legitimacy, as neither the prime minister nor the president are directly elected). The county government cannot dismiss them. Currently this council is the most heated political battlefield in Hungary.
In Czechia, there are no NUTS-1 subdivisions (the whole country is a single NUTS-1 area) and NUTS-2 are created just for the purpose of allocating EU funds and thus have no government.
A NUTS-3 region is headed by the Hetman. The hetman may be only elected or dismissed by the regional assembly, which is popularly elected every 4 years. The central government does have the authority to dissolve this assembly, but only in extremely rare cases (like if they fail to elect a hetman for 6 months). There are also other limited ways in which the central government can interfere with the regional autonomy, for example if the region passes an act which is suspected to be unconstituonal, the central government can suspend its validity until the courts can decide.
Short answer: no.
Long answer: A “federacy” is a state consisting of a large unitary state and small autonomous territories that are governed under special rules. Finland is a federacy, as the NUTS-1 division in Finland is between continental Finland and Åland. The government of Åland is elected by the Parliament of Åland, so the central government cannot dismiss them directly. However, there are two limits to this conclusion. Most importantly, the government of Åland has limited powers. Finnish internal state power is divided into two categories: “ELY” or local affairs-economy, transport and environment and “AVI” or enforcement, which includes things like police, emergency services and occupational safety enforcement. The Åland administration works only with ELY affairs, effectively functioning like a state ELY centre except it’s autonomously administered. The government of Åland is not in the chain of command of “State Department of Åland”, the local “AVI”, or with the Finnish Defence Forces. So, they have really no enforcement powers of their own, and rely on the Finnish central government for this. Second, the President of Finland has an absolute veto on any law that the Parliament of Åland may propose. Whereas, continental Finland is a unitary state, which means that there are no large subdivisions with “governments” to begin with. Local wellbeing service counties do have elected councils, but they have no taxation powers of their own, and obtain their funding solely from state grants. Municipalities (LAU, below NUTS-3) are the only subdivisions that have autonomous “governments” (city councils) with taxation powers.
No, the UK government cannot dismiss the Welsh or Scottish governments and can resume home rule in Northern Ireland only when its assembly collapses (as it does not infrequently).
Only the autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira have a local government on the NUTS1 level. I highly doubt that the national government can have that sort of power over them. The president can probably dismiss them in theory, just like they can dismiss the national government and parliament, but that would be unprecedented.
Portugal doesn’t have any governments for NUTS2 or NUTS3 regions – in the mainland, the largest entitles with local power are municipalities, which are below NUTS3. Below those you’ve got freguesias, but their leaderships are elected separately (though at the same time) and one can’t dismiss the other.
No, and cosntitutionally they are on the same level as the federal government. Just different competences, its a dumb system.
Well, yes and no.
Provincial leadership is very much like national leadership: a coalition is formed after provincial elections, and a King’s Commissioner/Governor is appointed by the monarch as the chairperson of the council. They are suggested by the Ministry of the Interior to the King, and the Ministry of the Interior can suggest to the King that they should be dismissed. It’s never happened. It was explored for a mayor once but that mayor – already placed on leave by the King’s Commissioner – resigned first.
National governments cannot dismiss a coalition government, though any party in the national coalition could instruct their local counterparts to step out of the local coalition, causing provincial government to fall. They local party is under no legal obligation to comply.
The country is not a federal system so it’s not like provinces have enough power to piss off national government. If action is considered, it is for integrity matters not policy.
In Ireland we don’t have much local government. All the power is held by the national government. Local governments in Ireland are at the county level, they only have control over roads, street cleaning, libraries, and fire stations. They don’t have any control over health, police, education, public transport, prisons, courts, taxes etc. They have very little power. All of their funding is given to them by the national government, since they are not allowed to collect any taxes.
Slovenia doesn’t have any lower-level governments, there is just the central one.
Municipalities have their own mayors and councils (governments), but they are entirely independent from the national government and elected in separate elections.
19 comments
It’s one of the (many) things that has to be fixed in Russia. We’re nominally a federation, but the president is free to dismiss any governor (and used to be able to appoint them as well). And since 2024 a governor is able to dismiss local mayors.
The mechanism exists for the government to intervene those governments (and it’s been used) but it requires both the executive (government) and legislative (Senate) to agree; and that nuts-1 government must be breaking the constitution or be doing something very against the interests of the countries. Ofc this could be challenged on the constitutional court.
No absolutely not. The German Länder are their own semi-sovereign republics with parliaments and governments in which the federal level has no say.
There is an article in the German constitution that gives the federal level the right to intervene by force if a state refuses to execute a federal law but in 75 years this has never been applied in practice and would be pretty unthinkable.
Governors of states are appointed by the current government. Though, individual states have little power, unlike what was meant to be in Russia.
Though of course legislatures are still democratically elected, which have speakers, and which pass laws. That just can’t be challenged by any government.
NUTS are only statistical divisions, they are not administrative or governmental divisions of territory. They can coincide, but don’t have to. But I get what you are asking. And the answer is generally no, but it depends.
In Germany, the federal government has no authority over country governments while the the land can abolish or restructure administrative regions, but that requires a whole procedure. Also they cannot simply dismiss a mayor or anything like that.
In Spain, the central government does have the power to dismiss the governments of the autonomous communities (CCAA such as Catalonia, Andalusia etc.), but this is an emergency power, used for example in 2017 on Catalonia. Governments of CCAA have no power to dismiss a provincial government.
In France and Italy the central government can dismiss regional and local councils under some circumstances.
It really depends on whether the lower sub-unit of the state has a charter of autonomy or is just an administrative arm of the of the greater whole and every member country of the EU is going to be slightly different. As for the EU… it has no such power.
Only about half of the regions in the UK have regional governments (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London.) Theoretically the central government can dissolve the regional governments and have direct rule, but in practice, this doesn’t happen unless there is a crisis like in NI in 2022. In this case the structures were kept in place, but the executive was left vacant.
No. They are elected by the state parliament/municipal council. State parliament can be disolved by the federal president at the request of the federal government, which needs approval in both chambers of the federal parliament. This would result in new state elections.
NUTS-1 regions are just the country divided into four parts (west, south, east and north) so they don’t have a government.
NUTS-2 are the provinces. The government of those cannot be dismissed even by themselves so also not by the national government.
No, the national government cannot dismiss the government of either the first level (regional) or second level (municipal) governments. Because the public representatives in both the regions and the municipalities are publicly elected by the inhabitants of of each region and municipality, in the same way as the national parliament and government is publicly elected. In fact, regional and municipal elections are held on the very same day as the national elections. They all hold exactly the same legitimacy.
I had to look up what that meant, and as far as I can tell, it means states/provinces and other subdivisions. This reply is based on that understanding
No, the government doesn’t have that authority here. The two autonomous territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands are, well, autonomous and Copenhagen can’t just say “we don’t like you, get lost” to their devolved governments. Denmark itself is divided into five regions, each with an elected regional council and chair of the council. But these are more administrative units than anything and few things are actually decided on a region level. These cannot be fired by the government either
NUTS-1 and NUTS-2 regions serve statistical purposes only, therefore have no governmental bodies. NUTS-3 regions are basically the counties + Budapest city.
Counties have councils, the members of the councils are elected on local elections, and the presidents of the councils are elected by the council members, so they cannot be removed by county governments. In reality, these councils have little to no purpose as they don’t have budgets on their own. I am not sure if anybody would notice if they would cease to exist.
In Budapest, however, there is an important council and a directly elected mayor (in fact, the mayor of Budapest has the greatest legitimacy, as neither the prime minister nor the president are directly elected). The county government cannot dismiss them. Currently this council is the most heated political battlefield in Hungary.
In Czechia, there are no NUTS-1 subdivisions (the whole country is a single NUTS-1 area) and NUTS-2 are created just for the purpose of allocating EU funds and thus have no government.
A NUTS-3 region is headed by the Hetman. The hetman may be only elected or dismissed by the regional assembly, which is popularly elected every 4 years. The central government does have the authority to dissolve this assembly, but only in extremely rare cases (like if they fail to elect a hetman for 6 months). There are also other limited ways in which the central government can interfere with the regional autonomy, for example if the region passes an act which is suspected to be unconstituonal, the central government can suspend its validity until the courts can decide.
Short answer: no.
Long answer: A “federacy” is a state consisting of a large unitary state and small autonomous territories that are governed under special rules. Finland is a federacy, as the NUTS-1 division in Finland is between continental Finland and Åland. The government of Åland is elected by the Parliament of Åland, so the central government cannot dismiss them directly. However, there are two limits to this conclusion. Most importantly, the government of Åland has limited powers. Finnish internal state power is divided into two categories: “ELY” or local affairs-economy, transport and environment and “AVI” or enforcement, which includes things like police, emergency services and occupational safety enforcement. The Åland administration works only with ELY affairs, effectively functioning like a state ELY centre except it’s autonomously administered. The government of Åland is not in the chain of command of “State Department of Åland”, the local “AVI”, or with the Finnish Defence Forces. So, they have really no enforcement powers of their own, and rely on the Finnish central government for this. Second, the President of Finland has an absolute veto on any law that the Parliament of Åland may propose. Whereas, continental Finland is a unitary state, which means that there are no large subdivisions with “governments” to begin with. Local wellbeing service counties do have elected councils, but they have no taxation powers of their own, and obtain their funding solely from state grants. Municipalities (LAU, below NUTS-3) are the only subdivisions that have autonomous “governments” (city councils) with taxation powers.
No, the UK government cannot dismiss the Welsh or Scottish governments and can resume home rule in Northern Ireland only when its assembly collapses (as it does not infrequently).
Only the autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira have a local government on the NUTS1 level. I highly doubt that the national government can have that sort of power over them. The president can probably dismiss them in theory, just like they can dismiss the national government and parliament, but that would be unprecedented.
Portugal doesn’t have any governments for NUTS2 or NUTS3 regions – in the mainland, the largest entitles with local power are municipalities, which are below NUTS3. Below those you’ve got freguesias, but their leaderships are elected separately (though at the same time) and one can’t dismiss the other.
No, and cosntitutionally they are on the same level as the federal government. Just different competences, its a dumb system.
Well, yes and no.
Provincial leadership is very much like national leadership: a coalition is formed after provincial elections, and a King’s Commissioner/Governor is appointed by the monarch as the chairperson of the council. They are suggested by the Ministry of the Interior to the King, and the Ministry of the Interior can suggest to the King that they should be dismissed. It’s never happened. It was explored for a mayor once but that mayor – already placed on leave by the King’s Commissioner – resigned first.
National governments cannot dismiss a coalition government, though any party in the national coalition could instruct their local counterparts to step out of the local coalition, causing provincial government to fall. They local party is under no legal obligation to comply.
The country is not a federal system so it’s not like provinces have enough power to piss off national government. If action is considered, it is for integrity matters not policy.
In Ireland we don’t have much local government. All the power is held by the national government. Local governments in Ireland are at the county level, they only have control over roads, street cleaning, libraries, and fire stations. They don’t have any control over health, police, education, public transport, prisons, courts, taxes etc. They have very little power. All of their funding is given to them by the national government, since they are not allowed to collect any taxes.
Slovenia doesn’t have any lower-level governments, there is just the central one.
Municipalities have their own mayors and councils (governments), but they are entirely independent from the national government and elected in separate elections.