Building a European model of local administration would seem out of the question, given the very different historical backgrounds of individual states and their particular forms of political and administrative organisation. Nonetheless, one wonders if it might not be possible. Although processes of setting up local autonomy have resulted in marked disparities in the delegation, transfer and devolution of competences, as well as in the organisation of controls, resistance to a single model does not preclude some very real convergences. This principles of local autonomy could be said to underlie a shared idea for a future European model of local administration, in its first stages of construction.