THE HAGUE, 03/01/07 - The Netherlands is the only European country that cuts the number of municipalities every year. The total on 1 January 2007 was 443.

Last year, 25 Dutch municipalities were abolished and 10 new municipalities created. In the past 40 years, the total has dropped by nearly 500 to the present 443. "This has happened very gradually. The Netherlands thereby differs sharply from other European countries," where big re-divisions occur once every so many years, the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) commented in releasing the figures yesterday.

In Denmark, a large-scale re-drawing of municipal boundaries was recently carried out - on 1 January 2007, the total was slashed from 271 to 98. Belgium cut the number of municipalities by three-quarters to 589 in one go in 1977 - this is still the total today. France has the largest number of municipalities in Europe, 37,000.

The re-divisions in the Netherlands last year were mostly in Limburg, where 11 municipalities disappeared and four new ones were formed. Additionally, numbers were cut by three and five in Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland respectively.

In the Netherlands, only five municipalities have remained unchanged over the past 200 years: Beesel, Kessel, Mook en Middelaar, Venray and Winschoten.

It will likely not be the last time that the number of municipalities in the Netherlands shrinks. Home Affairs Minister Johan Remkes recently suggested including all municipalities with less than 20,000 inhabitants in a single large-scale boundary re-drawing operation.