What is a Swedish municipality?

Sweden is divided into municipalities and County Councils. They handle matters and activities of public interest, which the Swedish government is not responsible for. The Local Government Act regulates what the municipalities and the County Councils shall do and must not do. There are 290 municipalities in Sweden Örebro being one of them. Stockholm is the largest with 758,311 inhabitants. Bjurholm is the smallest having 2,652 inhabitants. The average municipality has about 15,000 inhabitants.

What the municipality does

The municipality is the local authority. The largest towns in Sweden usually call themselves cities, although they are rather small from an international perspective.

Here are examples of areas for which municipalities are responsible:

• pre-schools and nine year compulsory schools
• upper secondary schools
• care of elderly
• care of disabled
• maintenance support
• libraries
• planning and building
• environmental and health protection
• water
• sewage system
• street cleaning
• waste
• emergency and rescue services

In addition to this the municipality does other things for the benefit and development of society, such as protection of nature, health, cultural development and Agenda 21.

Local self government and democracy

Compared to most other countries local self-government is very strong in Sweden — there is great freedom for each municipality to decide about its own activities.

The Government wants the municipalities to decide as much as possible about their activities. On the other hand the Government decides on laws which govern the municipalities.

An important condition for governance is the right to decide the level of the local tax and the right to taxation. The main source of income for municipalities is the local tax — almost 60 per cent. Therefore one of the most important tasks for the municipality is to create employment opportunities for its inhabitants. The inhabitants who are registered or own property in the municipality, are its members.

The principle of public access to official documents gives all Swedish and foreign citizens the right to partake and avail themselves of public and official documents. Each member of the municipality also has the right to have the legality of the decisions reviewed by the County Administrative Court.

The local democracy in the municipalities is an important part of the Swedish democracy. Each municipality has a City Council Assembly with representatives from the political parties. The City Council Assembly appoints the City Executive Committee and the other committees.

The general election for the Parliament, the City Council Assembly and the County Council are held on the same day every fourth year.