ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the European Union's (EU's) relationship with former colonial territories of member states, principally in Africa, but also in the Caribbean and Pacific regions for whom the Union has assumed special responsibility. The European Development Fund (EDF) is the tool for implementing the financial aspects of the Yaounde, Lome and Cotonou agreements with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. It is an intergovernmental fund financed by member states outside the EU budget, but most of its resources are managed by the European Commission. The Associated African States and Madagascar (AASM) agreement, contained in the first and second Yaounde conventions of 1963 and 1969, set the pattern for the wider EU-ACP conventions that were to follow. Signed in the Cameroon capital of Yaounde, they were followed by four EU-ACP conventions signed in the Togolese capital of Lome in 1975, 1979, 1984 and 1989.
