A very warm welcome to the website of the Rhine-Neckar Regional Association. We thank you for your interest and hope you enjoy reading about our organisation and the work we do.
Yours,
Dr. Eva Lohse and Ralph Schlusche
-
Map of the MRN
The Rhine-Neckar Regional Association (VRRN) is democratically legitimised and represents the centre of political decision-making in the European Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region. It was founded on January 1, 2006 as a statutory body under public law on the basis of the state treaty signed on July 25, 2005. Consequently, the VRRN is the legal successor to the Rhine-Neckar Spatial Development Association, the Rhine-Neckar-Odenwald Regional Association (called Lower Neckar until May 2003) and the Rhine-Palatinate Planning Department.
The association's head office is located in Mannheim. Its members in Baden-Württemberg are the Heidelberg and Mannheim county town districts, the Rhine-Neckar administrative district and Neckar-Odenwald administrative district, in Hesse the Bergstrasse administrative district, in Rhineland-Palatinate the independent towns of Frankenthal, Landau, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Neustadt/Weinstrasse, Speyer and Worms, together with the Bad Dürkheim, Germersheim, Rhine-Palatinate and Südliche Weinstrasse administrative districts.
From the perspective of the state administration structure, the Rhine-Neckar Regional Association belongs to the regional associations (called planning departments in Rhineland-Palatinate terminology). These are supported by the local authorities and are not part of the classical administrative hierarchy. Nor are they intermediate authorities, although they do form a tier between the county town and administrative districts and the federal states. The major advantage of this arrangement is that regional issues and problems can be tackled more impartially and "through to the next day".
