Most industrialized countries today offer developing countries preferences under a GSP scheme. The EU has done so since 1971, when it became the first developed importer to introduce such a scheme. However, more generous preferences were offered by the EU to groups of developing countries long before it became legal to do so under GATT rules. The Treaty of Rome, which laid the foundation for the EU in 1957, created a so-called “association”, which involved free trade provisions between the community and member countries’ colonies. Following independence, these African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries signed agreements with the EU and had arguably the best developing country market access to the EU under the Yaoundé and Lomé Conventions. In addition to ACP countries, developing countries around the Mediterranean Sea have also had preferential access better than mere GSP preferences, though not quite as beneficial as ACP preferences, since the 1960s. For a discussion of these EU preference schemes and an empirical assessment of their effects, see Persson and Wilhelmsson (2007). Figure 1 broadly summarizes the relationship between the various preference schemes by illustrating their position in the so-called pyramid of privilege.