This Working Paper analyses the European Economic Community’s (EEC’s) four development aid programmes, administered by the Brussels Commission and designed to assist economic development in developing countries. The four programmes - three loosely 'regional', only one global, emerged at different times as a specific response as much to the Community's internal requirements as to international circumstances and perceptions of developing countries’ development needs. They contain several innovative elements worthy of study and possibly of emulation, and the overall EEC 'aid package' is rightly portrayed as unique, quite unlike the aid programme of any bilateral donor, and yet not properly multilateral. In practice, however, the four programmes, having been developed in a haphazard manner partly through historical accidents and as a result of intra-Community policy trade-offs, manifest a severe imbalance in resource allocation.