AIDS fund shortfall could cost Europe seat on global forum

Date: 18/07/02

By David Cronin

THE European Commission risks losing its seat on the world's leading anti-AIDS forum because it is not paying enough to be a member.

In a paper drafted for the European Parliament's development committee, Socialist Richard Howitt says the Commission has to give a minimum of €83 million for 2003 to retain its place on the board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

But the amount which the Commission is proposing to give would be well below that sum, he warns.

Top EU development official Lieve Fransen currently occupies one of the seven seats reserved for industrialised countries on the 22-member board, on the basis of financial contributions.

The fund was established last year at the request of Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, who has estimated that €11.5 billion per year is needed to dramatically cut the number of AIDS deaths in poor countries.

'This is not just an institutional question about buying a seat,' said Howitt. 'The Commission could not talk seriously about being a leader in international aid if it loses its seat on the Global Fund.

'The amount it is giving is totally insufficient in terms of the huge spread of the AIDS-HIV pandemic.'

Howitt advocates that €85 million should be allocated from the EU's 2003 budget to the Global Fund and a further €43 million to projects undertaken as part of the Commission's own action plan against 'poverty diseases'.

The latter sum would be €5 million more than the EU executive has earmarked in its draft budget, endorsed by commissioners in late April.

The draft budget allocates €35 million to the Global Fund, although Howitt notes that Commission officials 'indicate privately that their intention is to top this up with equivalent funds' from the European Development Fund (EDF).

An agreement with governments from the African, Caribbean and Pacific bloc would be necessary to secure this extra amount, though.

Funding channelled through the EDF falls outside the general EU annual budget.

Howitt said it is 'unacceptable' that the Commission is 'relying on a contribution from the EDF' to the Global Fund without having first secured an accord with the ACP Council.

His suggested amendments to the budget won general support from his development committee colleagues, who are due to vote on them after their summer break.

Last week Michael Curtis, spokesman for Development Commissioner Poul Nielson, said people would be 'gravely mistaken' if they thought the Commission was only earmarking €75 million to anti-AIDS projects.

An additional €90 million is being devoted to numerous reproductive health initiatives in developing countries, he added.

Howitt's opinion paper also contends that less attention is being paid to eradicating poverty in the EU's projected budget for 2003 than in previous ones.

He laments how the Commission has lumped a wide variety of different types of foreign aid in the same category of the draft budget.

The proposal would see €4.9 billion given to chapter four of the budget - external relations - next year, a rise of 2.3 on the 2002 level.

Howitt is criticising how aid to countries considered candidates for EU membership is included within that chapter, despite there being a separate chapter - seven - for pre-accession funding.

According to Howitt, the result is a 'downward trend for poverty focus' as it means states with the lowest incomes in the world do not stand to benefit from the increase.

'This runs directly contrary to the declared aims of the European Commission and the European Parliament to make poverty focus the priority for development policy,' he said.

The proposed rise in chapter four allocations is 'more than absorbed', he said, by adding Turkey to the list of countries eligible to receive money from that chapter. Two other candidate countries - Cyprus and Malta - had already been included.

The European Commission risks losing its seat on the world's leading anti-AIDS forum, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, because it is not paying enough to be a member.