The Danish local self-government
by Dr Alexandre Guigue
Lecturer, public law, University of Savoie
Updated in July 2020 by Marig Doucy, PhD student in public law, University of Lille
A small state in the heart of Europe, bordering Germany and neighbouring Sweden, Denmark consists of a peninsula and numerous islands covering an area of 43,100 km2 (excluding the Faroe Islands and Greenland) and has a po-pulation of 5.82 million. Denmark is governed by the Constitution of 5 June 1953. The country joined the European Union in 1973 but is not part of the Eu-rozone. Denmark is also a member of NATO and the Nordic Council, along with Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. Denmark became a member of the EU, together with the United Kingdom and Ire-land, on January 1973.
Administratively, Denmark is organised in the form of a deconcentrated and decentralised unitary state with a high degree of autonomy for its compo-nents. On 1 January 2007, however, the local administrative landscape under-went a profound reform.