‘Utterly devastating’: Global health groups left reeling as European countries slash foreign aid

Some of Europe’s biggest global health funders are slashing their aid budgets, which health groups fear could spell catastrophe for countries reliant on foreign cash to combat malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, andemerging threats.

Global health groups still don’t know exactly which programmes are on the chopping block. But they say the recent European cuts are painful given the US has taken an axe to its own foreign assistance in the six weeks since President Donald Trump took office.

In the United Kingdom, for example, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said last week that he would shave the foreign aid budget from 0.5 percent of gross national income (GNI) to 0.3 percent in 2027 in order to prop up defence spending, prompting the international development minister to quit in protest.

Meanwhile the Dutch government laid out plans to cut aid by 2029 as it prioritises the “interests of the Netherlands”. 

Belgium has also trimmed development cooperation funding by 25 per cent. 

France slashed its aid budget by 35 per cent and will launch a review of its existing programmes. And Switzerland will shut down development initiatives in Albania, Bangladesh, and Zambia by late 2028.

The cuts mean global health programmes – which received around 10 per cent of all foreign aid in 2023 – are competing for a shrinking pot of money as Europeans turn their attention to defence and other domestic priorities.

“The door is just closing on aid everywhere we look,” Dr Michael Adekunle Charles, chief executive of RBM Partnership to End Malaria, a major anti-malaria initiative, told Euronews Health.

The US supplied about half of the group’s budget before those grants were terminated, Charles said.

A recent UK grant for £5 million (€6 million) to tackle the