Contractual Cooperation of Municipalities for Performance of Transferred Competencies in the Building Sector

Abstract

Abstract The reform of the self–governments in Slovakia caused the transfer of competencies from state authorities to municipalities. Every municipality is in accordance with Act no. 369/1990 Coll. on the Municipal Establishment obliged to ensure original and transferred competences for its inhabitants. However, for objective reasons, not all municipalities are able to perform them. Municipalities began to use the possibility of mutual contractual cooperation in accordance with the amendment to the Act on Municipal Establishment, under which municipalities can cooperate with each other for the purpose of carrying out a specific task or activity. Such cooperation between municipalities also exists for the purpose of exercising competence in the field of the building order. Pursuant to Act no. 50/1976 Coll. as amended, each municipality is a building authority. The aim of the paper is to qualitatively assess the reasons for contractual cooperation between the municipalities of the Nitra (NR) and Košice (KE) regions in the area of the building order (by using the method of structured interview). So far, 2 649 municipalities, which are a part of 189 joint building offices (JBO), have used the possibility of mutual contractual cooperation in the SR. Specifically, in the NR region there are 343 municipalities, which are part of 26 JBOs and in the KE region 391 municipalities, which are part of 28 JBOs. The qualitative method was used to find out the opinions of the building offices. Based on the obtained results, an optimal solution for problems of cooperation of municipalities was proposed by adopting new legislation, namely by the allocation of building offices to the seats of registry offices.