When the deputies meet as the Municipal Council, they can only deal with matters of the city, but not the affairs of the state.

The Gemeinderat, formed for the first time after the revolution in 1848 on the basis of the provisional municipal law of March 17, 1849,[1][2] issued by the imperial patent, was correspondingly enlarged in the following decades.

Before then, the leading classes of Vienna and Lower Austria had prevented the general right to vote, realized for men in Cisleithania in 1907, in the municipal and state policy.

The Gemeinderat has elected the mayor (who since November 10, 1920, also serves as the Landeshauptmann, or governor of the state of Vienna) and the (executive) city councils since June 1, 1920.

On that day, the Federal Constitution passed by the Austrian Constitutional Assembly on 1 October 1920 entered into force, which defined Vienna as a separate federal state and laid down rules for the legal and economic separation of Vienna from Lower Austria.

On 1 January 1922, the "separation law", which had been resolved by the Viennese and the Lower Austrian Landtag on 29 December 1921, entered into force.

Legislative drafts can be introduced as government bills, by means of initiative motions (supported by at least five regional deputies) or by referendums to the Landtag.

From there (today a back entrance to the Rathaus) staircases 7 and 8 lead directly to the council chamber on the first floor.