This thesis examines the policy process of the European Union and the group of African, Caribbean and Pacific countries in forming a successor agreement to the Lome Convention. The Lome Convention was a comprehensive preferential trade and aid agreement between the Union and 70 ACP countries, many of whom fall under the category of 'Least Developed Country'. However the fourth Lome Convention was scheduled to end in the year 2000, and it was suggested that it would be the last. In that context this thesis examines the negotiations leading to a successor agreement and undertakes to ascertain how the parties arrived at the Cotonou Agreement. It utilises the Rhodes and Marsh (1992) framework of policy networks. This framework examines a number of the factors in policy analysis and in doing so, demonstrates the linkages between membership, resources, integration and power in groups involved in policy making. The presence of an identifiable network in the EU-ACP negotiations is used to illustrate the utility of policy network analysis for European Union policy making. It suggests that the network allowed the EU and the ACP to arrive at an agreement which was satisfactory for all parties - especially considering the international context in which it was negotiated. The network also allowed the ACP to influence the process significantly more than if the relationship had been a traditional donor-recipient one. It therefore suggests that developed-developing country relations may not be as significantly imbalanced as previously suggested.