[1] It is designed to make it easier for companies in different countries to do business together, or to form consortia to take part in EU programmes.
It was based on the pre-existing French groupement d´intérêt économique (G.i.e.).
Several thousand EEIGs now exist, active in fields as varied as agricultural marketing, legal advice, research and development, osteopathy, motorcycle preservation[citation needed] and cat-breeding[citation needed].
One of the more famous EEIGs is the Franco-German television channel ARTE.
[2] Among other EEIGs: In contrast to the SE and the SCE, the lack of a Latin name for the EEIG lead to different names in the languages of the European Union: An EEIG is required to have the abbreviation in its legal name (Art.