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— Reform of Local and Regional Authorities in Europe: Common Problems and Idiosyncrasies — All European States face the same fundamental problems regarding their systems of public administration. These include the streamlining of territorial structures, adapting missions, urban growth, areas of low population density, competition between territories, budgetary pressure. The response each country provides to these issues will depend above all on the country’s structures, institutions and history. It is as if each country had a political, legal and institutional catalogue of possible responses it employs, all other responses being politically impossible, even inconceivable, thereby maintaining the wide divergences between national systems.