European Union development policies 
 

The European Union ranks first in the list of development aid donors, contributing close to 60 % of the world’s aid. The European Commission allocated 12,000 million Euros in 2008, more than a fifth of all European money dedicated to cooperation and development.
Since the beginning, the CECOD has dedicated part of its work to development policies of the European Union.
The CECOD was founded during the first semester of 2002, coinciding with the Spanish Presidency of the European Union.  On the 18th and 19th of April that year an international seminar took place in Madrid, the presentations of this seminar being published in The Reality of European Union Development Cooperation from the Spanish Perspective (La Realidad de la Cooperación al Desarrollo de la Unión Europea desde la perspectiva española [PDF]).
The creation of EuropeAid in 2001 was without doubt the culmination of the EU´s efforts to rationalize aid management and reception as well as to improve its quality and efficiency. Since 2006 the CECOD has annually organized the presentation in Madrid of EuropeAid´s annual reports, in which representatives of this Cooperation Development Department and other international experts participate