Opinion: The EU is an aid superpower. It just doesn’t know it yet

We have entered a perilous time for international solidarity and global health, precipitated by significant cuts in foreign aid by the U.S. government earlier this year, and a widespread reduction in official development assistance, or ODA, from multiple donor governments. Global health institutions, or GHI, face an existential crisis: The U.S., which contributed nearly one fifth of the World Health Organization’s budget, has withdrawn from the organization; it has said this week that it will no longer contribute to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; and the future of the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, is in doubt after many of its projects were suspended. Given that the U.S. contribution to global health assistance represents 42% of the total from major donor governments, these recent cuts exposed the risks of a system heavily dependent upon a single donor, and sovereign nation. Other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development donor countries have similarly retreated from their own commitments. The U.K.’s decision to reduce its ODA budget by 40% to finance an increase in defense spending is a case in point. Similar decisions have been taken for example by Belgium, with a 25% cut in ODA for the next five years, and France, where aid budgets have been cut by over €2 billion. The reaction of EU countries has been particularly tepid. While the idea of a strengthened European defense has gained momentum with the conflict in Ukraine, the idea of strengthened European diplomacy and international cooperation has not. EU aid budgets are still broken up into 28 different pots (27 national budgets and an EU budget), each responding to different national political processes and priorities, and with little ability to lead initiatives of the scale USAID could muster. <iframe title="2023 ODA spend, in USD billions" aria-label="Column Chart" id="datawrapper-chart-5T0yN" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/5T0yN/2/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;" height="437" data-external="1"></iframe><script type="text/javascript">!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}(); </script> In every crisis, an opportunity Yet another way is possible: Together, EU countries spent $124 billion in aid in 2023, nearly double the U.S.’ $66 billion. The differential is likely to be even starker in 2025 following U.S. aid cuts. By merging these 28 budgets into a single European instrument, the EU would overnight, and without spending a cent more, become the world’s undisputed superpower in the promotion of international solidarity, poverty alleviation, and global health. Turning 28 aid budgets into one would create huge efficiencies and ensure much more funding goes directly to those who need it the most. It would help generate the sort of economies of scale that have helped USAID become so dominant, through its ability to disburse very large and system-changing grants, something no EU aid budget is currently able to do. It would save money to the public purse of every single EU member state, at no political cost. The European Union has virtually nothing to lose, and everything to gain, from pooling aid budgets into a single, “federal” instrument of global influence. We could imagine a system whereby individual EU member states’ embassies and EU delegations in partner countries would come together under the stewardship of the EU diplomatic representation, to identify priorities in close collaboration with the host government. This would greatly reduce the transaction costs currently borne by African or Asian governments, who must liaise, negotiate, and co-design with multiple EU and its member states’ representations for relatively modest sums of money, and each coming with their own sets of conditionality, administrative processes, compliance requirements, and “pet issues.” In this pivotal year for global health, when 25 years of steady and significant progress in reducing preventable deaths, strengthening health systems, and making the world safer from pandemics are threatened with catastrophic reversals, the European Union has an opportunity to step into a space it has never occupied — that of the world’s undisputed promoter and guarantor of international solidarity, poverty alleviation, and global health. All this, without spending a dime. As the EU is embarking in the negotiations of the next long-term budget which will set the priorities and the spending levels on, among others, development aid for the next seven years (2028–2034), is this the right time to have this conversation? We recognize a bargain when we see one. Do European leaders see it too?