Inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) is defined as the collaboration of several municipalities with the aim of providing a joint public service. It actually refers to an economic instrument implemented with the aim of saving costs, sharing risks and reducing cost intensity and does not deal with the improvement of the technical specificities of the service.
The collaboration of municipalities in the management of waste is well established in Europe. Small and medium size municipalities adopt the IMC approach, which allows them to implement measures that would be too costly for them to implement alone. Thanks to this approach the waste management systems of the municipalities achieve better environmental performance. Frontrunner municipalities can join together to operate or contract out some waste management services with the aim of delivering economies of scale and building critical mass.
The setup of IMC can be possible by taking into account the following parameters:
- share administrative overheads,
- reduce unit costs and improve service quality through economies of scale,
- attract investment funds reserved for projects of a specified minimum size (e.g. EU structural funds and other investment mechanisms) and enhance economic performance through coordinated planning while allowing better environmental protection.