Municipal Councillors in Europe
Objectives
After having finished their work on local state-society relations in Europe by publishing two book most members of the former EURA Working Group on Local State-Society Relation in Europe have formed a new working group. This working group is focussed on the work of municipal councillors based on a Europe-wide survey.
In a way, it is a successor to a working group that conducted a survey of municipal councillors in the late 2000s. This survey only covers councillors from municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants; the one now planned will also include councillors from smaller municipalities – which requires sampling in most countries.
For preparing the survey and in particular the questionnaire a first work shop took place in Dubrovnik on 3 and 4 June 2022 and a second one in Darmstadt on 29 and 30 October 2022. Furthermore, a Zoom meeting with more than 30 participants was held on 3 February 2023 to discuss on a more or less final version of the questionnaire. It is planned to complete the survey by the end of 2023.
This time the following countries are included in the survey (the partners participating from the countries are mentioned in brackets):
- Austria (Carmen Walenta-Bergmann)
- Belgium (Tom Verhelst, Koenraad De Ceuninck and Kristof Steyvers)
- Bosnia and Herzegovina (Marijana Galic)
- Croatia (Dario Cepo, Ivan Kopric, Dubravka Jurlina Alibegovic, Suncana Slijepcevic and Romea Manojlović Toman)
- Czech Republic (Jakub Lysek, Dan Ryšavý and Josef Bernard)
- Finland (Linnéa Henriksson)
- France (Eric Kerrouche and Martial Foucaul)
- Germany (Björn Egner and Hubert Heinelt)
- Greece (Nikos Hlepas)
- Hungary (Gabor Dobos and Marton Bene)
- Iceland (Grétar Þór Eyþórsson and Eva Marín Hlynsdóttir)
- Ireland (Paula Russell)
- Israel (Eran Razin)
- Italy (Annick Magnier, Pippo Russo, Marcello Cabria, Silvia Bolgherini and Marta Ponzo)
- Latvia (Iveta Reinholde and Inese Abolina)
- Lithuania (Jurga Bučaitė-Vilkė and Aiste Lazauskiene)
- Macedonia (Memet Memeti)
- Poland (Pawel Swianiewicz, Katarzyna Szmigiel-Rawska and Adam Gendzwill)
- Portugal (Filipe Teles and Patricia Silva)
- Romania (Cristina Stănuș and Daniel Pop)
- Serbia (Dejan Bursać, Dušan Vučićević and Viktor Stamenković)
- Slovakia (Ján Buček)
- Slovenia (Simona Kukovič)
- Spain (Carmen Navarro and Lluís Medir)
- Sweden (David Feltenius, Anders Lidström, Louise Skoog and Jessika Wide)
- Switzerland (Stefan Kalberer and Daniel Kübler)
- Turkey (Evrim Tan and Irmak Özer)
- UK/England and Wales (David Sweeting, Bettina Petersohn, Colin Copus and Thom Oliver)
The working group met in Olomouc in the Czech Republic on November 22 and 23 2024 to clarify final questions regarding the generation of the common data set resulting from the survey of municipal councillors and to discuss contributions to a two-volume publication to be published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Below some photos taken during the meeting.


The EURA working group met in Sarajevo on 16 and 17 May 2024 (see photos below) to discuss final issues relating to the publication of the results of the survey of municipal councillors. The two-volume publication will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2026.
Further activities of the working group were also discussed at this meeting. The members of the group agreed to continue the work with another survey of mayors, which will be the third survey of mayors conducted by the group during the last 20 years. Two workshops are planned for the preparation of the questionnaire for this survey.
The first will take place from 14 to 16 November 2025 in Darmstadt and the second from 7 to 10 May in La Cristalera (near Madrid).
The working group welcomes new partners who are interested in this survey. If you would like to join the working group, please contact Björn Egner (bjoern.egner@tu-darmstadt.de).

The members of the EURA working group on municipal councillors in Europe aim to strengthen their relationships through joint teaching activities. Such activities can be financially supported by ERASMUS as part of the Blended Intensive Programme (BIP). This programme promotes joint courses between partners from different EU member states and countries participating in ERASMUS. Partners from different universities in these countries first prepare a seminar/course ‘at home’ about a certain topic (e.g. local government in comparison), followed by a ‘virtual phase’, an online meeting of all participants, and ending with a kind of summer school in which all partners meet in person and present and discuss what they have prepared in the first phase.
The first BIP took place from 23 to 27 June 2025 in Darmstadt with participants from Darmstadt, Madrid, Turku, Zurich and Warsaw. Lecturers from the participating universities were Björn Egner, Linnéa Henriksson, Hubert Heinelt, Stefan Kalberer, Daniel Kübler, Marta Lackowska and Carmen Navarro.
Anyone interested in taking part in such a joint teaching activity should contact Hubert Heinelt (hubert.heinelt@tu-darmstadt.de). The staff at TU Darmstadt’s International Relations Office would help partners apply for funding for further BIPs.

Last updated: 15/July/2025