Municipalities of Denmark

Denmark is divided into five regions, which contain 98 municipalities (Danish: kommuner, sing.: kommune). This structure was established per an administrative reform (Danish, ), effective Monday 1 January 2007 which replaced the counties (amter;singular amt) with five regions (regioner;singular region). The 270 municipalities were consolidated into 98 larger units, most of which have at least 20,000 inhabitants. The reason was to give the new municipalities greater financial and professional sustainability. Many of the responsibilities of the former counties were taken over by the enlarged municipalities. 32 of the former municipalities did not merge into larger units, either because they already had merged (2 newly created municipalities:Bornholm and Ærø) or had a population larger than 20,000 or because they signed a cooperation agreement with a larger municipality.

Presented in a report put forward as a proposal by the government in April 2004, a political majority behind the reform was reached 24 June 2004. The report on the structural reform of the public sector was first presented 9 January 2004 by the commission which was set up by the government 1 October 2002. The then (2004) 271 municipalities and 13 counties were all part of the reform, with Ærø Municipality being allowed by the government to be formed already Sunday 1 January 2006 after a referendum on the island had decided to merge the two municipalities on the island to form one municipality. Three sui generis municipalities who were also counties lost their county privileges and became part of Region Hovedstaden, although one of these three municipalities, Bornholm, which was created 1 January 2003 after the merger was approved in a law by the Folketing 19 March 2002, because of its remote location 150 km (93 mi) southeast of Copenhagen retains some regional functions and is thus called a Regional Municipality - it performs some tasks that are only done by the regions in the rest of Denmark.

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