Local administrative unit
Generally, a
local administrative unit (LAU) is an area of governmental administration below a
province,
region,
state or other major
national subdivision. Not all countries will use this term, but it can be descriptively applied anywhere.
Specifically, in the
European Union (EU), LAUs are basic components of
Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) regions. Two levels of Local Administrative Units (LAU) have been defined. The upper LAU level (LAU level 1, formerly NUTS level 4) is defined only for the following countries:
Finland,
Germany,
Greece,
Ireland,
Luxembourg,
Portugal and the
United Kingdom. The second LAU level (formerly NUTS level 5) consists of 95,152
municipalities or equivalent units in the 15 EU Member States (
2003 situation).
*
Local government*
Eurostat: Local Administrative Units
