Method Of Determining The Degree Of Autonomy Of The Administrative-Territorial Units?

Local autonomy is increasing as importance in the current context of the European Union. The paper aims to analyze, from such a perspective, the degree of local autonomy in European Union countries. In this regard I will propose a synthetic indicator measuring the degree of local autonomy calculated as a weighted average score based on a set of relevant quantitative and qualitative indicators of local autonomy existing in the literature whose representation in the group of indicators will be measured by a coefficient of importance. To each indicator as component of synthesis indicator will determine the field of variation and the average score obtained will be placed in classes of local autonomy defined in the assumptions made by science administration. We estimate the analysis to confirm the hypothesis that countries from European Union have differences of the degree of local autonomy between them. We consider that the paper can be a useful viewpoint in understanding the degree of local autonomy of European Union, which allows researchers to include other sources of information for researching an in a much more complex approach.