ABSTRACT
Outside the three federations of Belgium, Germany and Austria discussed in the previous chapter, a further four Member States of the European Union have a tier of regional government that is enshrined in the constitutional documents of the state. These four (Italy, Spain, Portugal and Finland) do not class themselves as federations; the regions are seen as a territorial division of the state, not an integral part of a federal or national level. In two of these examples, Italy and Spain, the regional tier covers the entire territory of the Member State, although both systems exhibit high degrees of asymmetry. Two further Member States, Portugal and Finland, have guaranteed regional autonomy to island archipelagos within their territory (the Açores, Madeira and Åland). Given their asymmetry, none of these systems could be classed as federal in the formal sense.
