ABSTRACT
The Committee of the Regions is a very weak institution, hopelessly heterogeneous and ineffective, the very embodiment of regional inequality in Europe. Discussing terms and concepts like that of a region should be the business of legal studies or political science. The political importance of a region is of course closely bound up with its distinct appearance in public thinking and, particularly, with the existence and the expression of regional identity. The chapter shows that in the European Union an intermediate, “regional” level is emerging between the national level which is the basis of political responsibility and political decision-making, and the local level at which a loose network of contacts has been knit. Regional inequality is much greater in the New Germany than it was in the old Federal Republic. The European Union has responded to the development by setting up the so-called Committee of the Regions as a kind of consultative body in addition to the European Parliament.
