Partners for global health
WHO collaborates with the European Union (EU) and its institutions to protect and promote people’s health around the world.
Our partnership has grown significantly in recent years, in recognition of the importance of global health and the need to prepare for and respond to the rapid changes taking place throughout the world that are presenting new and formidable challenges to health systems.
With their emphasis on equity, the Sustainable Development Goals encompass our shared, ambitious global commitment to ensuring universal health coverage for everyone, leaving no one behind.
The EU recognizes WHO’s central role as the leading and coordinating authority in addressing global health challenges. The EU has also committed to taking a proactive coordinating and leading role in an inclusive process to reinforce global health security and to strengthen WHO, in particular its preparedness and response capacities in health emergencies.
This important and multifaceted partnership covers political and strategic initiatives and their implementation at global, regional, sub-regional and national levels. It is framed through a memorandum of understanding and regular high-level strategic dialogues that lead to alignment and synergies in key areas of global public health, as well as a shared commitment to achieving results.
This partnership brings transformation at the country level, assisting national authorities to strengthen their health systems, achieve universal health coverage, and improve capacities to prepare for, prevent and respond to health emergencies.
It also enables countries to better apply a One Health approach to global challenges, address the health impact of climate change, make their environments healthier, and help their populations improve sexual and reproductive health and keep communicable and noncommunicable diseases at bay.
In the context of COVID-19 and the Team Europe approach, WHO and the EU have strengthened this transformative partnership with a coordinated global response, rooted in solidarity, to end the pandemic and support a post-pandemic recovery based on resilient health systems that ensure the well-being of all people.
The EU: a top contributor to WHO
The EU has consolidated its position as one of WHO’s leading donors, having significantly increased its contribution to WHO during the 2020–2021 biennium.
Through the European Commission, the overall EU contributions to WHO rose from US$ 105 million in 2012–2013 to US$ 373 million in 2020–2021. The WHO Budget Portal shows the European Commission as the third overall WHO contributor for the current biennium (as of the end of the second quarter of 2021).
Support for the global COVID-19 response
In 2020, the European Commission contributed US$ 135.76 million to WHO’s COVID-19 Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan. More broadly, the EU launched the Team Europe package in 2020 to combine resources from the EU, its Member States and financial institutions to support the COVID-19 response. Through this package, EU institutions have allocated over €26 billion to assist countries and international partners to respond to the pandemic.
The European Commission also played a critical role in the launch and success of WHO’s global cooperation platform Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, resulting in the development and deployment of vaccines, tests and treatments for COVID-19 in record time, as well as continued efforts to improve health systems.
To date, the European Commission is a leading donor to COVAX (ACT-Accelerator’s vaccine pillar), with US$ 601 million allocated to equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines and the exploration of possibilities for boosting local manufacturing capacity.
The European Commission also supports the donation of vaccines by EU Member States to low- and middle-income countries through COVAX.