53 ONLINE JOURNAL MODELLING THE NEW EUROPE NO. 38 / 2022 DOI: 10.24193/OJMNE.2022.38.03 THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS: ON THE MISSION TO REINFORCE THE DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY OF THE EUROPEAN UNION Paweł BĄCAL 1 , BA University of Warsaw, Poland p.bacal@student.uw.edu.pl Keywords: Committee of the Regions, European Union, Citizens’ involvement, Democratic deficit, Participatory democracy. 1. Introduction The Committee of the Regions (hereinafter CoR) is a unique element within the European Union’s (hereinafter EU) institutional system. It combines the subnational and European level together. Established to “reinforce the democratic legitimacy” (McCarthy 1997, p. 443), the CoR gives the EU the opportunity to take into account the needs of the local and regional communities (Petrašević, Duic 2016, p. 6), represented by the CoR’s members and 1 The Author would like to thank dr hab. Piotr Tosiek for all his helpful remarks. Abstract: The Committee of the Regions was established to reinforce the democratic legitimacy of the European Union. All of the members and alternates of the Committee have to hold the democratic mandate at the regional or local level. At first sight, these two factors may lead to the conclusion that the Committee of the Regions offers the citizens the opportunity to be a part of the European decision-making process. That should specifically include the involvement of the citizens and taking their opinions into account during the later stages of the process. Such a situation would also lead to the reduction of the democratic deficit in the European Union. However, a closer look might prove otherwise. The article’s aim is to evaluate if the Committee of the Regions does fulfil its mission. The concepts that serve as the theoretical foundation for the examination are participatory democracy, the input and output types of legitimacy as well as the democratic deficit. The main findings are based on the Author’s own empirical research, conducted among the Polish members of the Committee of the Regions. The analysis contains also the explanation for current state of affairs as well as points out at the possible scenarios for the Committee’s future.