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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
The European Community is distinctive among the donors of international development assistance. Although it is categorized officially as a multilateral aid institution, the Community differs in structure, purpose and role compared to other, more familiar organizations of that genre. Like other multilaterals, the European Community derives its aid budget, as well as its other financial resources, from the fiscal contributions of its Member states (each of which provides its own bilateral assistance to developing countries). Yet, to be sure, the Community represents more than just a multilateral economic union, since it also constitutes a supra-European governmental authority in the making. Indeed, the European Community has begun to evolve a common foreign policy, which is reflected in its role in Official Development Assistance (ODA). Its aid effort, in giving expression to the Community's common international purpose, has taken on most of the attributes of government-to-government assistance. It is this combination of multilateral and quasi-bilateral characteristics that sets the European Economic Community (EEC, as the Community is styled in its ODA role) apart as a uniquely meta-national participant in international development cooperation.
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4 Units of account (‘ua’) represented an EEC monetary denomination originally valued at parity with the United States dollar. This ua denomination was subsequently succeeded by the European Currency Unit (ECU).
5 Information on EEC aid programs in Asia and Latin America has been derived mainly from the Commission of the European Communities (European Commission), Ten-Year Report: 13 Years of Development Cooperation with the Developing Countries of Latin America and Asia—Data and Results, SEC (89) 713 Final, Brussels: 10 05 1989 [mimeo].Google Scholar
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25 EEC program support for ecology as an economic cooperation activity is separate and distinct from other environment development projects supported under EEC Financial and Technical Assistance activities in such areas as forestry and water resource management.Google Scholar
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46 Thus spoke European Commissioner for North-South Relations, Sr. Juan Abel Matutes: ‘Even though we recognize the (APEC) intentions expressed are good and the aim is to strengthen free trade, the procedure as such is not acceptable and does not comply with the spirit and rules of GATT…We cannot accept a forum of this kind—in which 50% of our external trade would be discussed—in which the Community would not participate’. (The Globe and Mail [Toronto], Report on Business, 10 07 1989.)Google Scholar
