Generally, a local administrative unit (LAU) is a low level administrative division of a country, ranked below a province, region, or state. Not all countries describe their locally governed areas this way, but it can be descriptively applied anywhere to refer to counties, municipalities, etc.

In the European Union (EU) and Switzerland, LAUs are basic components of Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) regions. Two levels of Local Administrative Units (LAU) have been defined. LAU-1 and LAU-2 were called NUTS-4 and NUTS-5, respectively, until the NUTS regulation went into force in July, 2003. The upper LAU level (LAU level 1, formerly NUTS level 4) is defined for the following countries: Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Ireland, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland and the United Kingdom. The second LAU level (formerly NUTS level 5) consists of 112,119 municipalities or equivalent units in the 25 EU Member States (2003 situation).

See also

• Local government
• Local Government Area

External links

• Eurostat Local Administrative Units
• Table of correspondance between NUTS levels and national administrativ units