47. The representative of the European Communities informed the Council that the European Communities and their member States were assisting a number of developing and least developed Members in improving their systems for intellectual property protection. Technical assistance was also being provided to a number of acceding countries like those of the Commonwealth of Independent States, China and Vietnam for the adaptation of their legal frameworks to the TRIPS Agreement. A programme for the modernization of intellectual and industrial property was being held for the Central and Eastern European countries, known as the PHARE countries, consisting of two separate technical assistance programmes called the Regional Industrial Property Program and the Horizontal Program on Intellectual Property. A programme was conducted, for the first time, for the ASEAN countries to provide technical assistance for strengthening and developing their intellectual property right systems between October 1993 and June 1997. A second cooperation programme with the ASEAN countries was under preparation. An industrial property programme was undertaken with Macau from 1995 to 1997 and further technical assistance programmes were currently in preparation with Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. In addition to the technical assistance programmes run by the European Communities, member States also ran their own programmes. Information on such programmes from Austria, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom had already been provided to the WTO.
