As the US freezes foreign aid, Europe’s humanitarian leadership faces a crucial test.
Bette Browne asks can the EU step up – even as it too diverts funds toward military spending
Europe’s humanitarian role on the global stage is more critical than ever, experts say, as the freeze on US foreign aid significantly undermines key international programmes. Yet questions remain over whether Europe can fill the growing void, with escalating conflicts and rising military demands straining available resources.
Those who say that Europe can and will take the lead in providing humanitarian aid point to the fact that the European Union (EU) is the largest development aid donor in the world. It provided over €98 billion in development and humanitarian funding in 2022, almost half of all funding globally. In January, while President Donald Trump was announcing a US foreign aid freeze, the EU launched an initial humanitarian budget of €1.9 billion for 2025 on the basis that more than 300 million people will need humanitarian assistance this year.
“The EU is upholding its commitment to help those most in need as a leading humanitarian aid donor,” said the European Commissioner for Preparedness, Crisis Management, and Equality, Ms Hadja Lahbib, who announced the aid allocation. Her agency, the European Commission’s Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations department, known as ECHO, manages the EU’s humanitarian assistance.
Since 1992, the European Commission has provided humanitarian aid in more than 110 countries. This funding and support is delivered through a range of partners, including European humanitarian NGOs, international organisations such as UN agencies, and specialised bodies within EU member states.
The aid supports essential needs like food, shelter, healthcare, water, and sanitation. It is distinct from the EU’s emergency support for disasters within the Union. For example, earlier this year, Ireland received emergency energy assistance during Storm Éowyn.
Indeed, Ireland itself plays a central role in response to global aid challenges, according to Irish Aid.
It contributed €2.3 billion in Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2022, which included €0.9 billion allocated for donor refugee costs related to Ukraine.
The charity highlighted the fact that EU institutions fund over 160 ‘Team Europe Initiatives’ around the world.
“Ireland funds over 20 Team Europe Initiatives. We believe that cooperating with our EU partners is an excellent way to ensure real change is being delivered to people’s lives.”
Commitment
While the European Commission highlights the contribution of member states like Ireland in helping to make the EU the largest donor of development aid in the world, it is not resting on its laurels. It says the EU is committed to increasing its contribution and to donating at least 0.7 per cent of its gross national income a year to development aid, managed by the ECHO.
This commitment was underlined by European Commission spokesperson Ms Eva Hrncirova in response to emailed questions from the Medical Independent (MI).
“As a leading donor of both development and humanitarian aid, the EU has long been at the forefront of supporting global efforts to promote sustainable development and tackle crises worldwide,” she said.
“The EU continues to remain committed to provide humanitarian assistance globally because we believe not only does it save lives, but it is also in our strategic interest. By tackling humanitarian crises, we are also investing in security and stability in other countries.”
Ms Hrncirova also emphasised that aid must be allowed to be delivered safely to those in need.
“Respect of international humanitarian law is not only fundamental, it is a basic necessity,” she told MI.
“This means protecting civilians during conflicts, civilian infrastructure like hospitals, and ensuring that aid workers are safe and not attacked.”
The largest amounts of EU humanitarian aid for 2025 have been allocated to Africa (over €500 million) and to the Middle East (€375 million). For Ukraine, the initial allocation is €140 million.
It is also worth noting that, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago, the EU, its member states, and financial institutions have mobilised €67.7 billion to support Ukraine’s economic, social, and financial resilience. This support has taken forms such as macro-financial assistance, budget support, emergency aid, crisis response, and humanitarian assistance.
In addition, military assistance measures are around €48.7 billion, bringing total support to Ukraine to more than €100 billion.
Including the resources allocated to help member states support Ukrainians fleeing the war, the EU’s total assistance to Ukraine and its people amounts to nearly €135 billion. In addition, the EU has set aside over €295 million for global interventions, enabling rapid responses to sudden-onset emergencies and unforeseen humanitarian crises throughout the year.
In monetary terms, the US contribution to humanitarian assistance has been enormous at over €72 billion in 2023, but this also includes military aid to countries like Ukraine and Israel.
By contrast, EU humanitarian aid exclusively covers areas, such as food and nutrition, shelter, healthcare, water and sanitation, and education in emergencies.
“All our aid is based on needs, and we provide it where it is needed most. This means in Gaza, Ukraine, in Syria, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and many other parts of the world. Sadly, conflicts are a leading cause of many humanitarian crises, as are increasingly natural disasters,” Ms Hrncirova noted.
Reversal
The World Health Organisation (WHO) paints a bleak picture of such humanitarian crises and the devastating impact of aid cuts. The WHO predicts a reversal of decades of global progress in halting diseases and protecting people against them.
“We expect that by the end of 2025, up to 25 countries will include malaria vaccines in their childhood immunisation programmes. These vaccines could save tens of thousands of young lives every year. However, many of the gains in malaria that have been made over the past 20 years are now at risk because of cuts to funding from the US for global health,” the WHO Director-General, Mr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a press statement in Geneva on 17 March.
“If disruptions continue, we could see an additional 15 million cases of malaria and 107,000 deaths this year alone, reversing 15 years of progress. It’s a similar story with HIV. The suspension of most funding to PEPFAR – the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief – caused an immediate stop to services for HIV treatment, testing, and prevention in more than 50 countries.”
Over the past two decades, US support for tuberculosis services has helped to save almost 80 million lives.
“Those gains, too, are at risk,” he said. “On immunisation, WHO’s global measles and rubella network of more than 700 laboratories, which was funded solely by the US, faces imminent shutdown. In many countries, the abrupt loss of US funding threatens to reverse progress in disease control, immunisation rates, maternal and child health, and emergency preparedness.”
He urged the US to continue funding humanitarian aid, stressing that making the world safer would also help protect the US.
“We ask the US to reconsider its support for global health, which not only saves lives around the world, it also makes the US safer by preventing outbreaks from spreading internationally. And because health is wealth, fighting disease around the world supports global economic growth and stability, which benefits the US.”
But it looks increasingly likely that the US will not heed this impassioned message. If it fails to do so, the WHO is urging other nations to increase their efforts to fill the void.
“Whether or not US funding returns, other donors will need to step up, but so too must countries that have relied on US financing, to the extent they can,” the Director-General said.
However, some experts warn that the EU’s commitment to funding humanitarian aid may come under pressure, as Europe faces growing demands to increase military spending in response to Russia’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine and President Trump’s abandonment of traditional military support for the continent.
Military funding
In a chilling reminder of these new realities, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, declared in a speech at the Royal Danish Military Academy in Copenhagen, on 18 March: “If Europe wants to avoid war, Europe must prepare for war.”
She continued: “By 2030, Europe must have a strong European defence posture as it faces an aggressive Russia and the potential loss of US security protections. The truth is that I quickly became convinced that this truly exceptional period, during which we witnessed the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall, and entire countries and peoples were liberated, is a new norm. This led to underinvestment in defence and, frankly, to excessive complacency. Our adversaries used that period not only to regroup, but also to challenge the rules governing global security.”
Bolstering Europe’s defences also topped the agenda at an EU leaders’ meeting on 20 March after the Union endorsed a commission plan aimed at mobilising up to €800 billion over four years for defence equipment and related investments.
UK
A month earlier, on 25 February, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that military spending would increase to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027 and that the country’s foreign aid budget would be cut.
He said it was “not an announcement I’m happy to make” and was aware of the fact that such spending cuts to overseas aid would harm many of the world’s most vulnerable people.
“I’ve taken a difficult choice today because I believe in overseas development, and I know the impact of the decision that I’ve had to take today and I do not take it lightly,” he told reporters at a Downing Street news conference.
“It is not a decision that I, as a British Labour prime minister, would have wanted to take, but a decision that I must make in order to secure the security and defence of our country.”
The move drew swift criticism, including from within Starmer’s own party. Labour MP Sarah Champion, Chair of the UK’s International Development Committee, called the decision “deeply short-sighted and [one that] doesn’t make anyone safer”.
Writing on X, she warned: “Development money can prevent wars and is used to patch up the consequences of them. Cutting this support is counterproductive.”
UK charities also condemned the cuts. In a statement, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development said the aid cut was “pulling a lifeline away from people in desperate need”. The agency’s CEO said it means that “in some of the most vulnerable places on earth, more people will die and many more will lose their livelihoods”.
Former UK Foreign Secretary Mr David Miliband, who now leads the International Rescue Committee, said that the decision to cut aid by £6 billion (€7 billion) in order to fund defence spending “was a blow to Britain’s proud reputation as a global humanitarian and development leader”.
The criticism continued unabated and three days after the Prime Minister’s announcement, the International Development Minister, Anneliese Dodds, quit her post.
“Ultimately, these cuts will remove food and healthcare from desperate people – deeply harming the UK’s reputation,” Ms Dodds wrote in her resignation letter.
“I know you [Starmer] have been clear that you are not ideologically opposed to international development. But the reality is that this decision is already being portrayed as following in President Trump’s slipstream of cuts to USAID.”
In reply, the Prime Minister said: “Overseas development is vitally important and I am proud of what we have done. The UK will still be providing significant humanitarian and development support and we will continue to protect vital programmes – including in the world’s worst conflict zones of Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan.
“The decision I have taken on ODA was a difficult and painful decision and not one I take lightly. We will do everything we can to return to a world where that is not the case and to rebuild a capability on development.”
Other cuts
France also moved in February to slash its foreign aid by €2.1 billion in a 2025 spending bill.
The 37 per cent reduction followed an earlier cut of nearly €800 million in February 2024.
The new cut will not suspend hundreds of health or food aid programmes immediately, according to Le Monde.
“But the cut comes at a time when global poverty has stopped decreasing for the first time in three decades and low-income countries are stalling, choking under the weight of their debt,” the French newspaper stated.
“Some sectors must prepare for the worst. This is the case for humanitarian aid, which will have to operate with €500 million per year instead of €900 million, at a time when crises are multiplying, from Gaza to Goma.”
A month later, on 18 March, German lawmakers voted to allow a huge increase in defence spending, raising questions about the country’s future as the world’s third-largest development aid donor in 2023.
Citing such cuts by key donors like the UK, France, and Germany, Global health expert Prof Lawrence Gostin (PhD) questioned whether Europe had sufficient resources and political will to fill the gap in development assistance left by President Trump’s aid freeze.
“Europe has the capacity to help fill the major gaps in humanitarian assistance left by the US withdrawal and Europe’s values align with humanitarian causes like feeding the hungry, protecting the vulnerable, and fighting infectious diseases,” Prof Gostin, who is Professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University in Washington, US, and Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on National and Global Health Law, told MI.
“And yet I don’t see Europe having the political will to step up at a time of crisis. France and Germany have major political turmoil, and the UK recently announced it was actually cutting international assistance.
“Now that the US has disengaged, there is a shortage of both expertise and funding for international health and development. Europe has the resources and expertise to add value. But, again, I am not seeing that happen,” he said.
I don’t see Europe having the political will to step up at a time of crisis
If it does not happen, the consequences will be enormous for developing countries. But, as the Covid-19 pandemic illustrated, in an interlinked world there will also be consequences for countries that fail to provide the aid.
“Based on the current trajectory, 7 per cent of the world’s population, nearly 575 million people, will still be living in extreme poverty in 2030. In parallel, the impacts of climate change will disproportionately fall on the most vulnerable, and threaten to push an additional 132 million people into extreme poverty,” the Development Co-operation Report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned in November 2024.
“Ending global poverty and reducing inequalities are interlinked. Now is the time to address these issues, before these goals become harder and more costly to reach in the face of impacts of climate-induced extreme weather, shifting agriculture patterns, rising sea levels, and potential mass migration between and within countries.”
It has also been suggested by the US Centre for Global Development research group that European countries should look to Canada and Japan to help fill the void left by the US.
“With USAID freezing funds and repatriating staff, there is an immediate need for other donors – particularly Germany but also Canada, Japan, and Sweden – to take the US’s place as lead provider in the most exposed countries,” the Centre said in a study in February. “Others, including China, Spain, and the UK should bring forward plans to increase assistance to prevent lives from being lost and fragile states from further destabilisation.”
“Should the US fully turn away from the world’s poorest countries, the effect on extremely poor people will be devastating. For governments prepared to commit a modest share of taxpayer revenue to saving lives, averting malnutrition, and maintaining stability, this is a moment to step up. Aid budgets must be reoriented towards the poorest countries – before the cost of inaction becomes irreversible.”
Ms Sania Nishtar, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, sounded a similar warning in an interview with Politico in March.
“As some countries of the world backtrack from development assistance, it would be very important for the EU to signal – to Africa in particular – that development is still a priority and that the EU is a reliable partner.”
Ms Nishtar said she recognised that security is vital for Europe. “But health security is a very important aspect of the security paradigm,” she said. “Both for the European Commission itself and for the EU as a whole, there is a real opportunity to demonstrate leadership [in global health].”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.