With regard to your own challenging question about your opinion on the Committee of the Regions, I would like to state that, as you know, the constitutional regions are very much in the minority in the Committee of the Re
gions, and it is of course unnecessary to stage one’s own defeats. The Committee of the Regions was composed in such a way as to ensure that the constitutional regions would form a minority, and I would want them to be considered as federal states that, in the course of history, have never been given the cha
nce to develop into Member States. ...[+++]