The majority of flare activity arises in active regions which contain sunspots, while CME activity can also originate from decaying active regions and even so-called quiet solar regions which contain a filament. Two classes of CME, namely flare-related CME events and CMEs associated with filament eruption are well reflected in the evolution of active regions, flare related CMEs mainly occur in young active regions containing sunspots and as the magnetic flux of active region is getting dispersed, the filament-eruption related CMEs will become dominant. This is confirmed by statistical analyses.

All the CMEs are, nevertheless, caused by loss of equilibrium of the magnetic structure. With observational examples we show that the association of CME, flare and filament eruption depends on the characteristics of the source regions: (i) the strength of the magnetic field, the amount of possible free energy storage, (ii) the small- and large-scale magnetic topology of the source region as well as its evolution (new flux emergence, photospheric motions, canceling flux), and (iii) the mass loading of the configuration (effect of gravity). These examples are discussed in the framework of theoretical models.To search for other articles by the author(s) go to: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html