Schröder under fire after blocking AIDS commitment

Date: 26/06/03

ANTI-poverty advocates have rounded on Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, for blocking an EU commitment to match a US pledge donating &036;1 billion annually to the international fund fighting AIDS.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said during the Thessaloniki summit that Germany, the largest net contributor to the EU budget, and the Netherlands, had rejected a call to include the donation pledge in the summit's conclusions.

Campaigners insist the Union must hit this target, as George W. Bush has pledged the US donation for a five-year period to assist the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, under the condition that other rich countries, principally EU members and Japan, provide similar amounts (€858 million and 118.3 billion Japanese yen).

"EU member states pleading economic hardship need to put this in perspective," said Lucy Matthew, spokeswoman for DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa), an organization founded by rock star Bono. "Germany is still the third richest country in the world and, in Africa alone, AIDS is killing 6,500 people per day and making the poorest continent rapidly poorer."

But the summit's conclusions do say that the EU will decide its commitment to the Global Fund at the 16 July conference of international donors in Paris.

The campaigners want the Union's delegates there to announce it will be giving the €858 million sought.

Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, has been criticised by anti-poverty campaigners for blocking an EU commitment to match a US pledge to donate &036;1 billion to the Global Fund Against Aids.