This report was produced by the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE), led by Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, Director.
The action was funded by the European Union via the Technical Support Instrument, and implemented by the OECD, in cooperation with the Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support of the European Commission.
This report was co-ordinated by Antti Moisio, Senior Economist, under the supervision of Isabelle Chatry, Head of Unit, Decentralisation, Subnational Public Finance and Infrastructure (DEFI), under the Regional Development and Multi-level Governance (RDG) Division, led by Dorothée Allain-Dupré, in CFE. The report was written by Antti Moisio and Margaux Vincent from the OECD Secretariat, Decentralisation, Subnational Public Finance and Infrastructure (DEFI) Unit in CFE. Valuable guidance and comments from Nadim Ahmad, Deputy Director of CFE, are gratefully acknowledged. The report includes substantial contributions from Jurga Bučaitė-Vilkė, Associate professor, Research director, Vytautas Kavolis Transdisciplinary Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities, Vytautas Magnus University (Chapter 2), Lasse Oulasvirta, Professor, Tampere University and Pekka Valkama, Adjunct professor, University of Turku, experts for the OECD on inter-municipal cooperation in Finland (Chapter 3), and from Pekka Kuosmanen, Managing Director, Fimdec Ltd and Markku Pekurinen, Research professor, M&M – Sote-asiantuntijat, Finnish experts for the OECD on healthcare and social services (Chapter 5).
The OECD is grateful to Dr Natalija Kazlauskienė, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Local Government and Regional Policy, Lithuanian Government Office, and to Dr Gediminas Česonis, Public Adviser to the Minister of Interior, Expert of Central Project Management Agency, for their collaboration and extensive efforts throughout the implementation of the project. The support of Angelos Binis and Katiuska Tarquis-Marin, Vladimir Isaila and Nikolaos Kleniatis from DG REFORM is also gratefully acknowledged. The OECD would also like to thank stakeholders and experts from central government ministries in Lithuania for their support during the two fact-finding missions, and their data and information inputs. The OECD is grateful to the mayors of the Tauragė region municipalities, Skirmantas Mockevičius (Jurbarkas), Vaidas Bendaravičius (Pagėgiai), Dovydas Kaminskas (Tauragė), Tadas Bartkus (Šilalė). The authors acknowledge the valuable inputs received from experts from municipalities of the Tauragė+ functional area. The authors would like to thank the Finnish experts, including Heli Hatonen from the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Mervi Kuittinen, Markku Mollari and Arto Sulonen i from the Finnish Ministry of Finance, Mikko Mehtonen from the Association of Finnish municipalities, Johanna Hietalahti, Heikki Niemeläinen and Tuukka Salminen from the Finnish Municipal Guarantee Board, Mika Gissler and Petri Matveinen from Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, and Simo Pesola and Sini Salmi and from the Finnish National Audit Office. Thanks are extended to Jack Waters (CFE) who prepared the manuscript and Roxana Glavanov (CFE) who provided guidance on preparing the publication.
The authors also acknowledge the support from Mapbox in making their data available for our report. Data were obtained through the Development Data Partnership (datapartnership.org), a collaboration between international organisations and private sector companies to facilitate the efficient and responsible use of third-party data in international development.