What are our objectives?

Concretely we aim at

• Strengthening the focus in improving existing EU legislation and its implementation at local and regional level
• Providing technical feedback on the implementation of EU legislation at local and regional level
• Ensuring a better involvement of local and regional actors at an early stage of the EU legislative process
• Promoting simplification and interregional learning in implementing and further developing EU legislation

Similar to an airport hub from which many services operate and connecting journeys can be made, a regional hub acts as a contact point which is able to contact, involve, partner up and maintain close contact with various stakeholders involved in EU policy implementation.

Being located in a subnational administration, the contact point will act as an intermediary between the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) and local and regional authorities, and it will provide timely feedback on EU legislative efficiency. It is expected to gradually develop the function of information point for all questions related to the better regulation agenda of the EU.

A regional hub can be understood in a broader sense as any territorial authority below the member state level that implements EU policy. It can therefore include communities, departments, Länder, provinces, counties, metropolitan areas, large cities or groups of smaller ones, large local authorities or groups of smaller ones, cross-border territories such as EGTCs and Euroregions.

The selection of the Hubs was based on three criteria: geographical balance, political and administrative commitment, and experience in implementing EU policies. Due to an astonishing number of high quality applications, the CoR decided to extend the number of members and the project now involves 36 hubs during the pilot phase (2019-2020). Over the long-run, the aim of this pilot action is to pave the ground for a wider network, which would be operational from 2021 onwards, opening up to all EU regions willing to participate and covering all policy areas where local and regional feedback is relevant.

Members of RegHub

Alentejo, Portugal | Autonomous Province of Bolzano, Italy | Autonomous region of Friuli ​Venezia Giulia, Italy | Brandenburg, Germany | Brittany, France | Brod-Posavina County, Croatia  |  Calabria, Italy | Catalonia, Spain | Community of Madrid, Spain | Community of Valencia, Spain | Crete, Greece | Dubrovnik-Neretva County, Croatia | Eastern Slovenia Cohesion Region, Slovenia | Flanders, Belgium |  Harghita / Ialomita, Romania  | Hauts-de-France Region, France | Helsinki-Uusimaa, Finland | Kosice Self-governing Region, Slovak Republic | Limburg (in collaboration with Province of Gelderland, Province of Zuid-Holland, Province  of Overijssel, city of Tilburg), The Netherlands | Marche, Italy |  Mazowieckie Voivodeship, Poland | Molise, Italy | North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany | Northern and Western Region, Ireland | Piedmont, Italy | Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Croatia | Region of Emilia-Romagna, Italy  | Šibenik-Knin County, Croatia | Silesia – TITRIA (Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Poland) | Thessaly, Greece | Tolna County, Hungary | Umbria Region / Veneto, Italy | Upper Austria (current presidency of the joint country expert conference "Subsidiarity monitoring"), Austria | Vorarlberg (leading the project-group of The International Lake Constance Conference, in collaboration with Baden-Württemberg and Bayern), Austria |  West Pomeranian Voivodship, Poland | Zasavje Development Region, Slovenia.

A three step approach

1. The CoR will invite the regional hubs to a workshop in Brussels to review the latest consultation and technical implementation report, follow-up on the interinstitutional impact of the network, exchange best practices or discuss challenges, and cover the next policy area for consultation.
   
   
2. For each of the selected EU policy fields, the network secretariat will send a questionnaire to the regional hubs with key questions which the EU institutions and the CoR consider as needing an answer during the process. The regional hubs will in turn provide a comprehensive reply to the questionnaire after having contacted and interviewed the key actors and agencies involved at implementing this EU policy local/regional level.
   
   
3. The results of the questionnaire will be compiled by the network secretariat in a technical implementation report, which will be provided to the CoR commission in charge of the policy as well as to the other EU institutions. The report will also be published on a dedicated CoR webpage. During the pilot phase, the network will organise approximately three workshops and consultations per year to test its work method and feedback mechanism.

1. Chaired by the first Vice-President of the European Commission (EC), Mr. Frans Timmermans, the Task force on Subsidiarity, Proportionality and "Doing Less More Efficiently" met once a month from January to July 2018 to make recommendations on how "to better apply the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality and identify policy areas where work could be re-delegated or definitely returned to EU countries". Three politicians from the CoR, Karl-Heinz Lambertz (BE/PES), Michael Schneider (DE/PPE) and François Decoster (FR/ALDE), were appointed as members of the Task Force in order to "find ways to better involve regional and local authorities in EU policy making and delivery".
   
   
2. Following the publication of the report made by the Task Force, the CoR implemented a concrete follow-up measure drawn from the Subsidiarity Task Force recommendations: the Network of Regional Hubs (RegHub).
   
   "The European Committee of the Regions should implement a new pilot network of regional hubs to support reviews of policy implementation."
        
   

Within the CoR, RegHub will be an additional platform to the Subsidiarity Monitoring Network. It will strengthen the role of the CoR and subnational authorities in the implementation and evaluation phase of EU policy making.



3. On 14 November 2018, the CoR President, Karl-Heinz Lambertz, met with representations of EU regions in Brussels to present the new Network of Regional Hubs project (#RegHub) and discuss the selection procedure of the participating regions for the pilot phase (2019-2020) A call for applications for the pilot phase was opened from the 19 October 2018 to 30 November 2018. The project was proud to receive 53 applications involving more than 88 regions in the EU, proving that local and regional authorities are wishing to contribute to the EU decision-making process.