The EU should fund proven aid programs that the USA are dropping

This is a cross post to the EU Budget Participation platform: https://citizens.ec.europa.eu/participation/processes/mmf/f/68/proposals/6370

I encourage European EAs to participate on the EU's online debate platform to influence the upcoming long term EU budget. Online contributions feed into the citizen's panel discussions from March to May 2025 which in turn feed into the final budget proposal.

Epistemic status:

• on my proposal: pretty sure this is a good idea
• on participating on the EU debate platform: 80% sure posting there has a higher impact than most other online debate spaces.

The current US administration froze funding for all USAID programs, and is likely to discontinue most of them. This already caused huge disruptions even in the programs that may be continued.

This presents a huge opportunity for the European Union. The HIV prevention program PEPFAR alone prevents around a million people a year from dying from HIV/AIDS 1, while spending only 6,5 billion USD. We know this because USAID programs are well documented and studied.

Very rarely in foreign aid does an opportunity present itself where we know this well what our money is going to achieve.

The EU should look at the data for each defunded or threatened USAID program and offer funding all of them that exceed the current average level of effectiveness of EU aid programs.

Humanitarian reasons should be enough on their own. Still, this investment would also greatly increase European soft power and diplomatic good will in the recipient countries. In many cases this was a large motivation for the US to create these programs in the first place.

And lastly, those worried about immigration should also jump at this opportunity: Decreasing the burden of disease has time and again been shown to improve GDP and living standards especially in countries with young populations 2 which directly reduce incentives to leave.