Counties of Lithuania

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The territory of Lithuania is divided into 10 counties (Lithuanian: singular apskritis, plural apskritys), all named after their capitals. The counties are divided into 60 municipalities (Lithuanian: singular savivaldybė, plural savivaldybės): 9 city municipalities, 43 district municipalities and 8 municipalities. Each municipality is then divided into elderates (Lithuanian: singular seniūnija, plural seniūnijos). This division was created in 1994 and slightly modified in 2000. On 1 July 2010, the county administrations were abolished,[1] and since that date, counties remains as the territorial and statistical units. The counties run county hospitals and specialised health care facilities. [2]

Until 2010 counties were administered by county governors (Lithuanian: singular – apskrities viršininkas, plural – apskrities viršininkai) appointed by the central government in Vilnius. Their primary duty was to ensure that the municipalities obey the laws and the Constitution of Lithuania. They did not have great powers vested in them, and so it was suggested that 10 counties are too much for Lithuania as the two smallest counties administer only four municipalities. There was a proposal to replace the counties with four or five lands, a new administrative unit, that would be decided according to the ethnographic regions of Lithuania and based on the 5 major cities with the population more than 100,000.

Modern apskritys should not be confused with apskritys that existed in the independent Lithuania during the interwar period. At that time Lithuania had a two-step administrative division: apskritys that were subdivided into valsčius. Lithuania now has a three-step division: counties, municipalities, and elderates (apskritys, savivaldybės, and seniūnijos). See subdivisions of Lithuania for details.

Map

This map shows counties as well as municipalities. Eight city municipalities and two municipalities are marked by numbers:

1 – Vilnius city municipality
2 – Kaunas city municipality
3 – Klaipėda city municipality

4 – Panevėžys city municipality
5 – Šiauliai city municipality
6 – Alytus city municipality

7 – Birštonas municipality
8 – Palanga city municipality
9 – Visaginas municipality
10 – Neringa municipality

List

# County
(media help)		 Capital Area
in km² (rank) 		Population
in 2012
[3] 		GDP(nominal)
total billion
EUR in 2014 		GDP(per capita)EUR in 2014 Municipalities
1 Alytus County
(listen • info)

 Alytus 5,425 (6) 153,600 1.2 8,200
2 Kaunas County
(listen • info)

 Kaunas 8,089 (3) 596,200 7.2 12,300
3 Klaipėda County
(listen • info)

 Klaipėda 5,209 (7) 333,100 4.3 13,100
4 Marijampolė County
(listen • info)

 Marijampolė 4,463 (8) 157,900 1.2 7,800
5 Panevėžys County
(listen • info)

 Panevėžys 7,881 (4) 244,300 2.2 9,100
6 Šiauliai County
(listen • info)

 Šiauliai 8,540 (2) 293,100 2.6 9,100
7 Tauragė County
(listen • info)

 Tauragė 4,411 (9) 107,200 0.7 7,000
8 Telšiai County
(listen • info)

 Telšiai 4,350 (10) 148,800 1.4 9,100
9 Utena County
(listen • info)

 Utena 7,201 (5) 147,400 1.2 8,100
10 Vilnius County
(listen • info)

 Vilnius 9,729 (1) 806,100 14.7 18,100
Lithuania Vilnius 65,300 2,890,679 36.4 12,400

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Dėl apskričių viršininkų administracijų likvidavimo". Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania. Retrieved 21 August 2011.
  2. ↑ Health Care Systems in Transition (PDF). WHO. 2000. Retrieved 3 July 2015.
  3. ↑ "Lietuvos statistikos departamentas". Department of Statistics to the Government of the Republic of Lithuania. 2015-01-16.

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, January 25, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.