The European Commission and the World Health Organization (WHO) regretted US President Donald Trump’s decision regarding the United States’ withdrawal from the WHO and hoped that he would reverse the executive order he signed on Monday 20 January after his inauguration.
“The WHO ripped us off”, the Republican claimed when he signed the executive order, justifying this withdrawal by referring to the discrepancy between American and Chinese financial contributions. In this text, he urged federal agencies to suspend the future transfer of any funds, support or resources from the US government to the WHO.
“If we want to be resilient to global health threats, we need to have a global cooperation in the health area. We see with concerns the announcement to withdraw from the WHO organization by the United States and we trust that the US Administration will consider all this ahead of the formal withdrawal”, said a spokesperson for the European Commission on Tuesday 21 January.
Regarding finances, “we now analyse closely with our partners the situation and we urge all the WHO members to address this challenge and to reinforce the commitments to have a predictable and flexible funding for the whole”, added the spokesperson.
“We hope that the United States will reconsider its position”, said a WHO spokesperson.
Laurent Castillo MEP (EPP, French), who spoke of a “sovereign choice” for that country, saw this as an opportunity for the EU, “since American pharmaceutical agencies and companies will no longer have access to a certain amount of health data to develop an optimal therapeutic solution or vaccine”. This could send a clear signal: “Come and create in the EU”, said the MEP.
Link to the WHO response: https://aeur.eu/f/f4t (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)