In Slovenia, discussion about the establishment of the secondary level of local self-government have been going on for years, but despite numerous attempts and a constitutional order, we still do not have provinces. Regional and local self-government are regularities in the majority of States of the European Union (EU), but one of the crucial and most important aspects of the establishment of such an authority is for sure a careful and goal-oriented determination of competences. In the main part of this thesis, we present framework regulations of the tasks of provinces in EU States by the following content sets: healthcare, regional development, economy and tourism, education and culture, infrastructure, environmental protection and agriculture. The thesis also briefly presents the contribution of the Council of Europe and EU to the development of local self-government at this intermediate level, but for better understanding, it tries to set a clear boundary between the federal and unitary regulation and the regional and wider local self-government. Finally, it adds an overview of the state in Slovenia in relation to the establishment of provinces, the determination of their competences, their regulation in the constitution and current proposed legislation. The 1991 Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia namely assumes three types of competences; tasks of wider local importance, matters of regional importance and tasks within the State competence. In this manner, we will have to be careful to not assign to many State competences to provinces and thus complicate or even prevent provinces from effectively execute their original competences. Appropriate determination of competences is namely crucial and in this matter knowledge about good practices of other States can be of great help to us, but we have to be always aware that we have to understand them in the light of their social reality and not expect their perfect reflection in our case.
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