Regulation of Municipal Property in European countries

Project Report from the year 2007 in the subject Law - European and International Law, Intellectual Properties, , language: English, abstract: In nearly all countries, municipalities own or control substantial amounts of real estate, but few municipal governments think of their holdings as a 'portfolio' whose composition might be modified to better serve public purposes. Economists therefore propose that legal and institutional frameworks should be set up in order to enable efficient real property asset management on the local level. However, there are good reasons why municipalities may only participate in economic life in exceptional cases. One reason arises from private law: local authority economic enterprises should not be in competition with the private sector in the free market economy. Another reason is derived from public law: activity and involvement in competition are associated with risks for the municipality. Those risks local authorities should not expose themselves to.