European Community Humanitarian aid Office (ECHO) is the European Commission's department for humanitarian aid. In 2005 it provided €652 million for humanitarian aid. The yearly amount spent by ECHO is similar to the amount spent by European Union member states individually. Together this amounted to €43 billion; around half of the world's humanitarian aid budget. The Treaty of Maastricht which established the European Union, divided EU policies into three main areas, called pillars. ... The European Community (EC), more important of two European Communities, was originally founded on March 25, 1957 by the signing of the Treaty of Rome under the name of European Economic Community. ... The Common Foreign and Security Policy, or CFSP, was established as the second of the three pillars of the European Union in the Maastricht treaty of 1992, and further defined and broadened in the Amsterdam Treaty of 1999. ... Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters is the third of the three pillars of the European Union, focusing on co-operation in law enforcement and combating racism. ... This article or section should be merged with List of European Union-related topics The European Union has several institutions: The European Parliament The European Council The Council of the European Union (or Council of Ministers) The European Commission The European Court of Justice (incorporating the Court of First Instance... The Commission seat in Brussels The European Commission (formally the Commission of the European Communities) is the executive body of the European Union. ... François-Xavier Ortoli, Romano Prodi, José Manuel Barroso and Jacques Delors The President of the European Commission is notionally the highest ranking unelected official within the European Union bureaucracy. ... 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This is 0.34% of the Union's GNP, higher than the US and Japan's GNP contribution, however only a few member states individually have reached the 0.7% target agreed by industrial countries. The Union aim to increase its aid to 0.56% of the GNP by 2010, moving to 0.7% in 2015. Measures of national income and output are used in economics to estimate the value of goods and services produced in an economy. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... 2015 (MMXV) will be a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

ECHO comes under the direct responsibility of Louis Michel, European Commissioner for Development & Humanitarian Aid. Through ECHO funding, nearly 20 million people are helped each year in more than 60 countries through 190 partners (NGOs, international organisations, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and UN agencies) Louis Michel Louis Michel (born September 2, 1947) was until July 2004 the Belgian foreign minister. ... Louis Michel Barroso Commission, 2004 to 2009 European Commissioner for Development & Humanitarian Aid is a member of the European Commission. ... NGO is an abbreviation or code for: Non-governmental organization Nagoya Airport (IATA code) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The Anarchist Black Cross was originally called the Anarchist Red Cross. The band Redd Kross was originally called Red Cross. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... This article is about the United Nations, for other uses of UN see UN (disambiguation) Official languages English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Arabic Secretary-General Kofi Annan (since 1997) Established October 24, 1945 Member states 191 Headquarters New York City, NY, USA Official site http://www. ...

The key principle of ECHO's work is to focus on humanitarian need without regard to foreign policy concerns, which nation states may be more concerned with.

External link

• ECHO Website ec.europa.eu
• EU development activities europa.eu