Regions of Denmark
Regions of Denmark Regioner (Danish) | |
---|---|
Location | Kingdom of Denmark |
Number | 5 (as of January 1, 2021) |
Government |
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Subdivisions | (Kommuner) |
The five Regions of Denmark (
Each region is governed by a popularly elected regional council with 41 members, from whom the regional chairperson is chosen.
The main responsibility of the regions is healthcare. Lesser powers of the regions include
In contrast to the former counties (1970–2006), the regions do not have municipal powers. Regions cannot levy taxes, but are financed partly by block grants from the central government (until 2018 sundhedsafgift, i.e. health tax) and partly by taxes collected by their constituent municipalities. Regions cannot decide their budgets independently, but must use the block grant for the purposes that are specified by the central government. In other words, the regional powers were dramatically reduced in favor of the local level. As they are not municipalities, regions are not allowed to have coats of arms, but they do have modern logos.
The small archipelago of Ertholmene to the northeast of Bornholm is not part of any region or municipality. Its inhabitants do not pay municipal taxes, nor did they pay the central government's health care contribution tax (2007 until 2018) or the tax levied by counties prior to 2007.
The representative organisation Danske Regioner was set up on 23 March 2006. It is an advocacy and lobbying organisation speaking on behalf of all of the regions, including negotiating labour contracts, etc. The organization also maintains an office in Brussels (as did its predecessor, Amtsrådsforeningen). As a central representation of the Danish healthcare system, it has rather large, although unofficial, powers. Its equivalent before 2006 was Amtsrådsforeningen (ARF), the organisation of county representations, which had a comparatively larger power.
List of regions
Population numbers in this table will not be updated. For 1 January population every year, see below Regions of Denmark#Population growth.
Danish name (literal translation) |
Self-appellation in Englisha | Seat of administration (largest city if different) |
Chairman | Populationb (2022-01-01) |
Total areab (km2) |
Pop. density (per km2) |
Former counties (1970–2006) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Region Hovedstaden ("Capital City Region") |
Capital Region of Denmark[1] | Hillerød (Copenhagen) | Lars Gaardhøj | 1,867,948 | 2,546.3 | 733.59 | Counties: Copenhagen, Frederiksborg; municipalities: Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Bornholm |
Region Midtjylland Region")("Mid Jutland |
Central Denmark Region[2] | Viborg (Aarhus) | Anders Kühnau | 1,341,857 | 13,000.2 | 103.21 | |
Region Nordjylland ("North Jutland Region") |
North Denmark Region[3] |
Aalborg | Mads Duedahl | 591,740 | 7,874 | 75.15 | Århus County
|
Region Sjælland ")("Region Zealand |
Region Zealand[4] | Sorø (Roskilde) | Heino Knudsen | 843,513 | 7,217.8 | 116.86 | Roskilde, Storstrøm, and West Zealand |
Region Syddanmark ("Region of Southern Denmark") |
Region of Southern Denmark[5] | Vejle (Odense) | Bo Libergren | 1,228,362 | 12,191 | 100.75 | Funen, Ribe, South Jutland and the southern half of Vejle County |
Danmarkb ("Denmark") |
N/A | Copenhagen | N/A | 5,873,420 | 42,894.8 | 136.92 | (Counties of Denmark) |
a The regions themselves use English names that are not necessarily a verbatim rendering of the Danish name.
b Area and population figures do not add up. Land area: 42,394 km2 (16,368 sq mi). Inland water area: 500 to 700 km2 (193 – 270 sq mi). Ertholmene included in totals. Statistikbanken.dk/FOLK1A+FOLK1AM (monthly population numbers).
Names in English
Like their geographical areas, the names of several regions are
The Regions of North Jutland and Central Jutland have chosen to market themselves internationally under the names of
The government most often uses the Danish names in English-language publications[6] or directly translated English names (e.g. Greater Copenhagen, Zealand, North Jutland, Southern Denmark, Central Jutland).[7]
Strictly speaking, there is no authority defining the correct English names since the official names are stipulated in a law existing only in a Danish version.
Population growth
Year | Region Hovedstaden |
Region Sjælland |
Region Syddanmark |
Region Midtjylland |
Region Nordjylland | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Population | Growth | Population | Growth | Population | Growth | Population | Growth | Population | Growth | |
2006 | 1,633,565 | 3,184 | 811,511 | 4,607 | 1,185,851 | 3,966 | 1,219,725 | 7,703 | 576,807 | 165 |
2007 | 1,636,749 | 9,076 | 816,118 | 3,309 | 1,189,817 | 4,842 | 1,227,428 | 9,613 | 576,972 | 1,867 |
2008 | 1,645,825 | 16,460 | 819,427 | 1,825 | 1,194,659 | 5,008 | 1,237,041 | 10,691 | 578,839 | 1,676 |
2009 | 1,662,285 | 17,986 | 821,252 | −688 | 1,199,667 | 610 | 1,247,732 | 6,266 | 580,515 | −887 |
2010 | 1,680,271 | 19,116 | 820,564 | −801 | 1,200,277 | 379 | 1,253,998 | 6,995 | 579,628 | 201 |
2011 | 1,699,387 | 15,202 | 819,763 | −1,856 | 1,200,656 | 686 | 1,260,993 | 5,689 | 579,829 | 167 |
2012 | 1,714,589 | 17,479 | 817,907 | −1,548 | 1,201,342 | 77 | 1,266,682 | 5,828 | 579,996 | 276 |
2013 | 1,732,068 | 17,337 | 816,359 | 367 | 1,201,419 | 1,090 | 1,272,510 | 5,028 | 580,272 | 785 |
2014 | 1,749,405 | 18,720 | 816,726 | 3,754 | 1,202,509 | 3,219 | 1,277,538 | 5,212 | 581,057 | 1,575 |
2015 | 1,768,125 | 21,049 | 820,480 | 7,019 | 1,205,728 | 6,042 | 1,282,750 | 10,559 | 582,632 | 2,867 |
2016 | 1,789,174 | 18,230 | 827,499 | 5,054 | 1,211,770 | 5,454 | 1,293,309 | 10,944 | 585,499 | 1,836 |
2017 | 1,807,404 | 15,255 | 832,553 | 2,471 | 1,217,224 | 3,539 | 1,304,253 | 9,343 | 587,335 | 1,813 |
2018 | 1,822,659 | 12,903 | 835,024 | 1,714 | 1,220,763 | 2,585 | 1,313,596 | 7,082 | 589,148 | 607 |
2019 | 1,835,562 | 10,461 | 836,738 | 621 | 1,223,348 | –243 | 1,320,678 | 5,662 | 589,755 | 181 |
2020 | 1,846,023 | 9,061 | 837,359 | 1,481 | 1,223,105 | 529 | 1,326,340 | 5,708 | 589,936 | 503 |
2021 | 1,855,084 | 12,864 | 838,840 | 4,673 | 1,223,634 | 4,728 | 1,332,048 | 9,809 | 590,439 | 1,301 |
2022 | 1,867,948 | 23,923 | 843,513 | 6,344 | 1,228,362 | 9,051 | 1,341,857 | 17,022 | 591,740 | 2,894 |
2023 | 1,891,871 | 19,196 | 849,857 | 3,096 | 1,237,413 | 993 | 1,358,879 | 6,809 | 594,634 | -1,499 |
2024 | 1,911,067 | 852,953 | 1,238,406 | 1,365,688 | 593,135 |
Note: Numbers for the year 2006 are pro forma to be a reference, an example, to compare (neighboring) regions and changes in population numbers when the economy was expanding, growing, as opposed to when it was contracting.[8]
Functions
- Health sector, including hospitals, psychiatry and health insurance, general practitioners and specialists.
- Health insurance for basic dental care.
- Regional development concerning nature and the environment, private sector economy, tourism, employment, education, and culture, outlying areas and rural area development. Administrative assistance for private sector growth fora.
- Ground pollution surveillance and cleanup.
- Raw material mapping and planning. Permission for extraction, i.e. gravel pits.
- Social and educational institutions for people with special needs.
- Public transportation.
The most important area of responsibility for the new regions is the public health service, accounting for 90% of the regions' expenditure. They are also responsible for employment policies and public mass transit (buses and a few local railways). However, in eastern Denmark (Region Zealand and the Capital Region) the regions and 45 out of 46 municipalities share one employment region and transit is handled by a single transport agency, Movia.
Healthcare reforms and centralization
The regions own all public hospitals in their areas and also control the
Four of the regions have a
The projects, in Denmark known as 'super hospitals' (da: Supersygehus), were intended to increase the quality of care and reduce costs, but have almost uniformly experienced large-scale planning problems including breach of budgets, delays, interior climate problems, unsatisfactory design and last-minute cost cuts such as removing kitchens, decreasing the bed capacity or removing amenities for patients. As a result of the centralisation, Denmark will decrease its hospitals with emergency care from 40 in 2007 to 21 in 2020. The changes have been criticised by residents in areas far from emergency hospitals. To compensate, some of the regions offer paramedic helicopter response in addition to ambulances. In addition, since 1999 the government has obliged Danish hospitals to increase their productivity by 2% per year for the same budget, in the expectation of possible benefits from technical progress, but often leading to cutbacks in services. A growth in bureaucracy has generally been observed by doctors and employees.[10] In the Capital Region and Zealand Region, a new electronic health record system developed by Epic Systems has been described as a major scandal, causing unresponsive IT systems, wrong prescriptions, more time-consumption and a lack of overview. Doctors and other employees have demanded the withdrawal of the system, but the regions insist that it will remain in place and errors be corrected.[11]
Regions are responsible for providing
Administration and politics
Regions are led by directly elected councils (regionsråd), which each consist of 41 members. The head of the council is the regional council chairman (regionsrådsformand), who is elected by the council from its members.[12] Elections are held simultaneously with municipal elections every four years. The latest Danish local elections were held in 2021.
Unlike the former counties, regions are not entitled to levy their own taxes, but rely on central state funding (around 70%) and funding from the municipalities (around 30%). A central government "health contribution" tax (sundhedsbidrag) on income which was 8% when it was introduced from 2007 initially replaced most of the county tax (amtsskat). With income taxes in the lowest bracket being raised 1 percentage point a year, the health contribution tax was eliminated in 2019. In 2012 this tax was lowered to 7%, 2013 6%, 2014 5%, 2015 4%, 2016 3%, 2017 2%, 2018 1%. This follows an agreement on taxes by the
The income tax that each of the 98 municipalities levy was raised by three percentage points 1 January 2007 thus replacing the rest of the county tax to finance health care.
90% of the budgets of the regions is allocated to the national health service. Health has remained the main issue in regional politics, especially because major changes to Denmark's hospital layout were announced immediately after the municipal reform.
History
Earlier mergers
After the 1970 reform, in 1974
The five municipalities of
Ærø Municipality in Funen County was allowed to be formed already 1 January 2006 from the island's former two municipalities of Ærøskøbing and Marstal, reducing the number of municipalities to 270.
Transitional process
The reform implied deep changes of the whole Danish public sector. It took effect from 1 January 2007, but was prepared from 2005. In the local elections of 15 November 2005, municipal councils for the upcoming 98 municipalities and five regions were elected. These councils were officially merger committees (sammenlægningsudvalg) from 1 January 2006 through 31 December 2006. During that year, their task was solely that of preparing the mergers. On 1 January 2007 these elected committees were renamed municipal councils and now ruling the new municipalities, without new elections taking place.
The councils of the older, smaller municipalities, as well as the old municipalities themselves, were in force until the end of 2006. They were elected in November 2001 and would normally have been in power for a four-year term of office, from 1 January 2002 until 31 December 2005, but their term of office was simply extended by one year.
The equivalent name for the upcoming regional councils were preparatory boards (forberedelsesudvalg) and these were likewise elected on 15 November 2005. The county councils of the old counties had their mandate prolonged by a year and existed parallel to the preparatory boards during 2006.
One municipality, Bornholm, which was formed January 2003 before the reform was initiated, and one formed January 2006, namely Ærø, as part of the reform, in addition to 30 municipalities, most notably Copenhagen, many of its surrounding municipalities and some island municipalities, were not affected by municipal mergers 1 January 2007. In these municipalities, the councillors served the full term of office from 1 January 2006 until 31 December 2009.
After the transitions, the next local elections took place on 17 Nov 2009. A few local political parties have emerged as a protest against closing of hospitals or cutbacks in healthcare, most notably Fælleslisten, which got over 40 percent of the votes in the Holstebro area in the 2009 election, and the Psychiatry List in the 2017 election, both in the Central Jutland Region.
Political background
The reform has been called the biggest reform in thirty years.[
The abolition of the counties had long been an important goal for both the Conservatives and the Danish People's Party. 24 June 2004 the Danish People's Party decided to back the government's proposal for a structural reform of the public sector, thus securing a majority in the Danish parliament (Folketing), although the party had preferred just abolishing the counties without replacing them with a new administrative level between the central government and the municipalities. The parties who wanted to limit the regional tier of government prevailed insofar as the regions have no authority to levy taxes, and are not municipalities unlike the former counties (1970–2006) (Danish amtskommune, literally 'county municipality'), and therefore cannot move budgets from one area of expenditure to another but must pay back any money not used, rather like departments or agencies of the central government.
State Administration (2007–March 2019)
Establishment
The regions were distinct from the state administration offices (Danish: statsforvaltning(en)). The regions are responsible for devolved tasks within healthcare and regional planning and governed by an elected council. The State Administrations were not subordinate to the Regions, but regional governmental offices under the Ministry for Children and Social Affairs.
The state administration with its regional offices handled matters within family law, including child custody and child contact, divorce, paternity and child support cases, which often involve a high degree of conflict when parents disagree. It also handled matters such as name change, artificial fertilisation, citizenship, right of residence for EU citizens, guardianship for adults, and acted as a complaints authority for municipal decisions in building matters.
Initially after the reform, effective from 1 January 2007, there were five state administrations, covering the same areas as the five regions. They were subject to the Ministry of the Interior and Health. They also acted as a complaints board for a wider range of decisions taken by municipalities, including social law. The civil servants leading each of the five state administrations had the title of state administration director.
From 1 July 2013, the State Administration was organised with one central office in Aabenraa and eight regional representations. It was managed by one central State Administration director and several subordinate vice directors.
Abolition
While not a court, the State Administration handled over 100,000 family law cases per year. In media reports, the entity was criticized for bureaucratic handling of cases and negligence of the
A 2017 government plan proposed to abolish the State Administration and replace it with a new entity, the Family Law House (Familieretshuset).[13]
The State Administration was abolished from 1 April 2019, and the Agency of Family Law took over a large part of the tasks of the State Administration.
Ecclesiastical tasks
One of the tasks of the State Administration is the technical and economic supervision of the dioceses within the Church of Denmark, along with the bishops. In this function they bear the title of
History
The predecessor of the state administration(s), from 1970 until the 2007 reform, were the 14 county government divisions or
While prefect or governor is an English rendering of the title, county prefects were practically senior government officials, unknown to a larger public and less powerful than governors in many other countries. On the Faroe Islands and Greenland, after autonomy, the equivalent representative of the Danish government is the High Commissioner, (rigsombudsmand, formerly amtmand, which was often translated as governor).
The general public was mostly familiar with the former statsamt and then statsadministration as the entity dealing with divorce and child custody.
The position of county prefect dated back to the age of absolutism. After elected councils were introduced, the King-appointed county prefect still led the elected county council and had larger political influence. In 1970, his political role was then taken over by the county mayor (amtsborgmester) who was one of the elected county council members. The county prefect remained as the highest government representative in each county, and in his traditional civil servant uniform would be the person to receive the Queen on her visits throughout the country. In Copenhagen Municipality, the switch was made in 1938 when the title of
See also
- List of Danish regions by Human Development Index
- Municipalities of Denmark
- Subdivisions of the Nordic countries
- Faroe Islands
- Greenland
- NUTS statistical regions of Denmark
- ISO 3166-2:DK
References
- ^ "Capital Region of Denmark".
- ^ "Central Denmark Region (Region Midtjylland) - Region Midtjylland".
- ^ "The North Denmark Region".
- ^ "About Region Zealand - Region Sjælland". Archived from the original on 2016-08-18.
- ^ "The Region of Southern Denmark // Region Syddanmark". Archived from the original on 2008-09-15.
- ^ E.g. [Statistics Denmark] in the Statistical Yearbook 2009, page 32
- ^ English names of state administrations Archived 2008-03-27 at archive.today
- ^ Statistikbanken.dk/BEV107
- ^ "Danmark får nyt universitetshospital" [Denmark gets a new university hospital] (in Danish). Zealand Region. 4 March 2016. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
- ^ "Cuts and growth in bureaucracy bringing Danish health service to its knees, alleges senior doctor". Copenhagen Post. 18 September 2017. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
- ^ "New IT system causing chaos at Danish hospitals". Copenhagen Post. 9 June 2016. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
- ISBN 978-87-7723-471-2.
- ^ "Ny model for skilsmissesystem" [New model for divorce system] (in Danish). Ministry for Children and Social Affairs. 20 June 2017. Retrieved 1 December 2018.
- ^ "Den katolske stiftamtmand" [The Catholic diocesan governor] (in Danish). Vejle Amts Folkeblad. 27 July 2011. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
External links
- Danish Regions Official homepage (13. February 2013). Retrieved on 9 August 2014.
- Danish Ministry for Economic Affair and the Interior - Statistics department Statistical information about Danish regions and municipalities (in Danish)
- Explanation of and background for Municipal Reform – with links to the Danish Ministry of the Interior and Health (in English)
- The agreement on the Municipal Reform – from the Danish Ministry of the Interior and Health (in Danish)
- The Ministry's home page with report from the Commission on Administrative Structure etc.
- Home page of Regions. Click on map to access a Region's home page (in Danish)
- Budget of the Regions(in Danish)
- Statistikbanken.dk Budget
- Statistikbanken.dk Budget(in Danish)
- English home page of State Administrations
- Areas of concern (adoption etc.) (in English)
- Ministry of Employment
- Links to the 4 employment regions(in Danish)
- Regionalization and devolution: Proposed new regions of Norway (powerpoint slide show)
- Maps (pdf) showing local/regional administration 1660-2007(in Danish)
- Map with named municipalities and regions
- Krak searchable/printable map(outline of municipality visible, but does not print out!)
- Statistics Denmark
- Region Danmark