In this paper we study controllability properties of semilinear degenerate parabolic equations. Due to degeneracy, classical null controllability results do not hold in general. Thus we investigate results of 'regional null controllability', showing that we can drive the solution to rest at time T on a subset of the space domain, contained in the set where the equation is nondegenerate. (C) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.