European Committee of the Regions
EU advisory body composed of locally and regionally elected representatives coming from all member states
The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) is the European Union's (EU) assembly of local and regional representatives which provides sub-national authorities (i.e. regions, counties, provinces, municipalities and cities) with a direct voice within the EU's institutional framework.
Established in 1994, the CoR was set up to address two main issues. First, about three quarters of EU legislation is implemented at local or regional level, so local and regional representatives needed to have a say in the development of new EU laws. Second, there were concerns about a widening gap between the public and the process of European integration; involving the elected level of government closest to the citizens was one way of closing the gap.
History
Within the European Union, local and regional authorities have lobbied for an increased say in EU affairs. This resulted in the creation of the European Committee of the Regions by the Maastricht Treaty, and the provision for Member States to be represented in the Council of the EU by ministers from their regional governments.
Principles
There are three main principles at the heart of the committee's work:
Subsidiarity
This principle, enshrined into the Treaties at the same time as the creation of the CoR, means that decisions within the European Union should be taken at the closest practical level to the citizen. The European Union, therefore, should not take on tasks which are better suited to national, regional or local administrations.
Proximity
All levels of government should aim to be 'close to the citizens', in particular by organising their work in a transparent fashion, so people know who is in charge of what and how to make their views heard.
The public source identifies “European Committee of the Regions” as eU advisory body composed of locally and regionally elected representatives coming from all member states. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around European, Committee and Regions.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q205203. VIAF identifies the subject as 82156009976449581974. The Library of Congress control number is n95117496. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1994.
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This entry incorporates text from “European Committee of the Regions” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.