NEOS launch campaign to push municipal mergers in Vorarlberg

NEOS Vorarlberg has launched a campaign to promote municipal mergers and invited all 96 mayors in the state to discuss their communities’ futures, ORF reported on Tuesday. The campaign, called “Mergers, not illusions”, features an interactive online tool for combining municipalities.

Party leader Claudia Gamon said she wanted to hear what mayors needed and where they saw their communities in 10 years. The aim, NEOS said, is to move the debate from state politics into municipal councils.

The party described local finances as strained. It said 46 of Vorarlberg’s 96 municipalities had no freely available funds in 2024, while personnel costs had risen by about 30 percent. Municipal debt stood at €2,913 per person, the highest of Austria’s federal states, according to NEOS. The party compared that with €1,647 in Upper Austria and €862 in Salzburg.

Thirty-two Vorarlberg municipalities have fewer than 1,000 residents. Together, they have 17,701 residents, slightly fewer than the 17,723 in Hohenems alone.

The campaign’s “municipal merger tool” lets users combine municipalities on a map. It then displays the new municipality’s population and council seats, provides “fun facts” and suggests a name.

NEOS says mergers could expand childcare, improve administration and reduce costs. The party cites a rise in childcare facilities in Styria from about 155 to 250, lower per-person administrative costs in Switzerland and additional funding for municipalities with at least 10,000 residents. It also says the number of municipal political offices fell after mergers in Glarus and Styria, while a Swiss study found that residents’ sense of connection to their municipality remained unchanged.

The party points to Styria’s 2015 reform, which reduced the number of municipalities from 542 to 287, and a 2011 merger in the Swiss canton of Glarus, which cut the number from 25 to three. NEOS also cites a fall in the number of Swiss municipalities from more than 3,000 to about 2,100 over 30 years, and Denmark’s 98 municipalities for a population of about 6.03 million.

Vorarlberg’s state government offers up to €100,000 to each municipality involved in a merger, as well as half the costs of preparing plans and providing process support and facilitation, even if a merger does not go ahead. Gamon said a funding programme that nobody discusses is an illusion.

NEOS is calling for a clear merger plan with set criteria, an active offer of support from the state, referendums in all affected municipalities, a reduction from four district administrative authorities to two, and fairer municipal funding. Gamon said village names, clubs and fire brigades were not administrative matters and would remain in place after a merger.

The debate was prompted by the Vorarlberg Court of Audit. In February, its director, Brigitte Eggler-Bargehr, called for fundamental reform, questioned the number of municipal cooperation arrangements and raised mergers as one possible approach. She said cooperation could improve quality but remained costly and required staff and time.

At the end of March, the state and the Association of Municipalities agreed on a reform agenda and a €105 million package over three years. The annual funding is €35 million: €20 million from the state, €10 million from municipalities through needs-based allocations and €5 million in public transport savings. The net financing requirement of the Social Fund is to be frozen from 2026 to 2028.