Committee on Development Ordinary meeting
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DEVE European Parliament
Follow its sittingsBarry Andrews
So the question is, would you agree that the Irish presidency so far has been a huge success? Voting is open. Voting is closed. One abstention. Look at that.
Okay, so we now proceed to the compromise one. So we will vote by roll call vote on compromise one. It's not roll call. Okay, we'll vote by show of hands on compromise one. Those in favor?
Those against? Abstentions? It is carried. Thank you very much. We will proceed with the vote on the draft opinion on establishing the Union's performance and now final vote.
Okay, we go to the final vote which is by roll call vote. The voting is open. Oh sorry, wait wait wait. Hold on a second. Sorry, I restart.
Okay, we restart. The voting is open. Please vote now. Voting remains open.
There are three who didn't vote. Getting there, one more, and that's it. Voting's closed. And it is carried. Okay, thank you very much.
We will proceed now with the vote on the draft opinion on establishing the Union support for asylum, migration and integration for the period from 2028 to 2034 for the LIBE Committee. I'll now give the word to rapporteur Andrej Kollar, if you'd like to say a few words, Andrej, please.
Ondřej Kolář
Thank you very much, Chair. Good morning to everyone. I would like to thank first of all the wonderful ladies from the secretariat for their support and patience they had with all of us when negotiating this opinion. And of course all my fellow colleague rapporteurs and their teams for their approach, because I think that we've managed to negotiate a very well-balanced and objective opinion which actually shows that development aid is a very important tool when it comes to the relations of the European Union.
So thank you very much and I hope that we will vote in favor of this text.
Barry Andrews
Okay, thank you Andre and now we will go to the votes and the first is on compromise amendment one. By show of hands, those in favor? Those against? Abstentions? And it's carried.
And the final vote is by roll call vote. The voting is open. And the voting is closed. And it's carried with 13 in favor, 5 against and 4 abstentions. Thank you very much.
So we have a five-minute break before we all stay in attendance for the Irish presidency priorities. I'm sure nobody is going to slip away with the excitement. See you in five minutes.
Okay, I think we can resume now. And for item eight of today's agenda, and as you probably know, Ireland has assumed the presidency of the Council of the EU on the first of July. And we're delighted to be joined by the Minister of State for International Development and Diaspora of Ireland to the committee, Mr. Neil Richmond, TD. And we're very pleased to hear his perspective on the next six months and how what Ireland's priorities will be in this specific space.
I'm proud to say that Ireland has a lot of a very good reputation and authenticity in this space for many, many decades. And despite the movement of the tide away from development cooperation, Ireland has remained incredibly steadfast in its commitment to continuing funding at this crucial time. So funding is one thing, the overall legislative structure of the European Commission's approach and how we're going to agree this on the Global Europe initiative and the Global Europe instrument is a major issue for us over the next six months, but also how the Global Gateway strategy is shaping the approach of not just the European Commission, but also the member states and how we're going to manage that. Also on the humanitarian side, again, Ireland has been a steadfast supporter of international humanitarian law and the humanitarian principles and of course the financing of humanitarian action across the world. So these are the topics that we will hopefully get some insight from Minister Richmond on over the next few minutes.
So Neale, again, you're extremely welcome. Great to see you here. As I said to you before, it makes the presidency real to see you sitting here. We've had the various presidencies over the last couple of years, so it's really fantastic to have you here.
So Neale, the floor is yours for 10 minutes and you're very welcome.
Niamh Smyth
Thank you very much, Chair, honorable members, ladies and gentlemen, it is a real pleasure to be here to address you today at the outset of Ireland's eighth time holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. But from the outset, Chair, if if you don't mind, may I just on behalf of the government extend my very deep condolences to you personally on the loss of your father. For the committee members, David Andrews was one of Ireland's finest ever statesmen. His and the wider Andrews' commitment to human rights, to humanitarian action is has been profound for the last number of decades. He is a huge loss not just to you personally, Chair, to your wider family, but our deepest sympathies are with you at this time and more importantly the gratitude of a very very grateful nation must be extended to your family for the work of your father for so many decades.
Dear friends, this month Ireland has the great pleasure of taking over the presidency from Cyprus, who ably led the Council agenda in the first half of this year and achieved a great deal. I really do commend their efforts.
As presidency of the Council, Ireland looks forward to working closely with you in the European Parliament across the broad range of files on our shared agendas. Through the collective strengths of the EU institutions, the Parliament, the Council, and the Commission, EU citizens gain benefits every day in democracy and human rights and multilateralism through our union of rules and values. I know from personal experience the extensive work now being put in across the institutions and in Ireland to make the most of the next six months. In recognition of the importance of this effort, which requires us all to work together, Ireland's presidency will embody the Irish proverb, Ní neart go cur le chéile, there is no strength without unity. We know that global challenges cannot be solved by countries in isolation.
The Irish EU presidency will focus on its efforts on enhancing the competitiveness of our European economy, safeguarding our union values at home and abroad, and providing for the security of our citizens. These three thematic pillars are interlocking and will guide the government's work as presidency. We will work intensively on proposals within each pillar, as well as on priorities including our ongoing support for Ukraine and our global engagement. In an uncertain time, we will work to strengthen and stabilize the EU's relationships with neighbors and with our partners across the world.
The scale and complexity of our agenda is significant, and we know that rightly, expectations are high. This also applies to our agenda relating to development cooperation and humanitarian assistance. We aim to open up the political discussion on the evolving role of development cooperation and humanitarian assistance. At a time of heightened global uncertainty and increased pressure on development finance, we want to support a strategic discussion on how the EU can adapt its development cooperation in line with our interests and values, keeping poverty eradication at the heart of our action. Ireland's presidency will encourage reflection on how the EU can strengthen its partnership offering through the Global Europe instrument, follow up on the Seville financing for development commitments, and make the best use of all available sources of finance to deliver sustainable and mutually beneficial partnerships.
The European Union and its member states are today the world's most significant development actor. Our collective leadership is important now more than ever before. Through the Team Europe approach, the EU must continue as a reliable, values-based partner of choice for developing countries. During our presidency, I will host an informal Foreign Affairs Council on Development meeting in Dublin, at which I will work with my colleagues to discuss these significant issues.
This will be the first time we hold an informal development council meeting in 18 months and chair, I very much hope that you will be attending, able to attend on behalf of the committee. This conversation is vital because it is in the interest of the EU to be a reliable and principled partner for the long term. As global stability weakens, reliability is a key strength. It'll help us remain engaged in a rapidly changing world. Dear friends, development is not charity and we must move on from that mindset that some people are trying to introduce.
Development is an investment to target issues at source. Food prices, energy security, irregular mass migration, climate change, disease, conflict and political extremism are both a cause and a consequence of poverty and inequality. EU development policy has been built on efforts targeted to eradicate poverty, reduce vulnerabilities and address the root causes of these issues. Reducing poverty to reduce global and national inequalities and to foster stability and security is in all of our interests. Ireland's presidency will ensure a strong focus on principled and needs-based humanitarian action.
The global humanitarian system is facing an unprecedented crisis driven by armed conflict, climate shocks, forced displacement, food insecurity and growing geopolitical fragmentation. Humanitarian needs continue to rise dramatically while global humanitarian funding is declining sharply.
The EU and its member states now provide close to 40% of global humanitarian funding. This gives us the platform but also the responsibility to continue to advocate strongly for increasing quality humanitarian aid, adhering to humanitarian principles and defending international humanitarian law. The Irish presidency will promote the EU's role as a global humanitarian actor, focusing not just on life-saving assistance but long-term resilience building that reduces humanitarian need. We will also prioritize humanitarian diplomacy and protection, exploring how the EU and its member states can better use our diplomatic leverage to ensure humanitarian access, adherence to humanitarian principles and international humanitarian law and putting the protection of people at the heart of our response. We will bring a focus to humanitarian assistance in response to the most severe crises, including those in Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan and the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, the Eastern DRC and Great Lakes region, as well as the wider Middle East.
In light of predicted El Niño impacts, we will focus on climate-smart humanitarian action, early warning, and food and nutrition security. The Irish presidency has already started discussions on Council conclusions in response to the EU's joint communication on humanitarian aid, and I welcome the European Parliament's passing of their resolution last week. We look forward to close cooperation with the Parliament on the implementation of the joint communication and on ensuring that EU humanitarian action remains principled, effective, and adequately resourced. In October, I will co-host a high-level conference with Commissioner Hadja Lahbib on the protection of aid workers. Dear friends, pursuing agreement on the new EU multi-annual financial framework is an overarching priority for the Irish presidency.
This builds on the significant progress made by the Danish and Cypriot presidencies since negotiations started a year ago. Underpinning our ambition is the clear need for the Union to have a strong and robust budget which provides for the many opportunities and challenges which the Union faces and will continue to face for the decade ahead. At its core, the EU's long-term budget is an expression of our priorities, and the Global Europe instrument will substantially shape the funding and direction of international development architecture from 2028. We are committed to our chairing role, negotiating workable compromises for an ambitious EU budget.
We will ambitiously pursue agreement on remaining sectoral files within the MFF, and for those that have achieved agreement in Council, we are prepared to commence trilogues once the European Parliament signals its readiness. During Ireland's presidency, food, health, and gender equality will be core dimensions for focusing strategic debate. Climate action will be a horizontal priority. At all levels, we will bring a focus to the need for collective action when it comes to food security and nutrition. Progress has slowed on tackling the central global challenges of poverty and hunger.
The conflict in the Gulf and the disruption it has caused will continue to have a huge impact on global food security this year. During our presidency at all levels, we will bring a focus to the need to work as Team Europe to avoid an escalating crisis across entire regions and build resilience for stability and growth. Ireland will support discussions on sustainable food systems to look to identify strategic investments the EU can make to advance global food and nutrition security. We will highlight the role that the EU's Global Gateway strategy can play in generating inclusive economic growth. I welcome the focus of the Parliament report on Global Gateway and note that many of the suggestions and requests in the report align with the recently approved Council conclusions on Global Gateway.
As the EU's main external investment strategy, Global Gateway can play an important role in generating inclusive economic growth and indeed achieving the SDGs based on democratic values and high standards, including in good governance and transparency, respect for the rule of law, human rights and gender equality, environmental and social sustainability, a view that I know is shared by the Parliament. Ireland will also work through our presidency to continue to prioritize the global health agenda, facilitating discussions on the EU's new global health resilience initiative. Health is important for both human well-being and inclusive economic growth, and we share the view of the Parliament that global health is a central pillar of EU external policy. During our term, we will strive to reinforce the case for stronger health systems and better access to essential health services, highlighting the links between poverty, poor health and reduced economic participation. We will encourage reflection on the reforms needed to the global health architecture, including prevention, preparedness and resilience.
The recent outbreak of Ebola in the DRC underlines more than ever the important role of international health regulations in ensuring global health security by promoting transparency, cooperation and coordinated action. The Irish presidency aims to chart a forward-looking European external action policy on gender equality that delivers for those furthest behind and projects the Union's values internationally. We recognize the important role the Gender Action Plan has played in increasing the strategic importance of gender equality in EU global action.
Dear friends, the global pushback against gender equality represents an unacceptable rolling back on core values and indeed the sustainable development goals. Climate change is having a significant impact across the development agenda. We will lead in preparations for COP 31 with a strong focus on climate adaptation. Chair, if I may, I will conclude today by underscoring that our shared EU values and those enshrined in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are the bedrock that makes Europe a good place to live and to work and that underpin our competitiveness and our security. Democratic values and multilateralism are under deliberate attack by actors who seek to undermine Europe's values at home as well as to denigrate the value of multilateralism in addressing global challenges, particularly threats to peace and security and the consequences of crises and conflicts, especially on the most vulnerable people.
I'll conclude by thanking the committee for their time. I look forward to all questions and I'm really grateful for the opportunity to play a part in the presidency over the coming months. Go raibh maith agat.
Barry Andrews
Okay, thank you very much, Niall. Thank you, Niall, and thank you for your personal comments, which are very much appreciated. Okay, so let's open it up to the coordinators or their representatives. So first of all, for EPP is Niels Geuking. Niels, you have two minutes.
Niels Geuking
Yeah, I speak in German, so please use your headphones. Yeah, perfect. Also, danke, dass Sie heute hier sind und sich dann auch unseren Fragen stellen. Das zeigt wirklich, dass die irische Ratspräsidentschaft dann hoffentlich auch den Stellenwert für die Entwicklungszusammenarbeit bemessen wird, den wir hier auch brauchen, denn gerade wir stehen hier unter recht schwierigen Vorzeichen. Denn die kommenden und auch geopolitischen Aufgaben, die sind enorm.
Ebenso auch die Ambitionen im Haushalt. Sie sprachen es an. Es gibt tatsächlich erste Stimmen, die natürlich auch sagen, dass wir die Mitgliedstaaten wahrscheinlich zu hohen Anforderungen aussetzen und eventuell auch überfordern, sodass sich die Frage stellen wird, wie werden sich die Verhandlungen beim MFF dann auch zukünftig entwickeln. Das wird dann auch in Ihrer Verantwortung liegen, dass Sie das gut managen und die Mitgliedstaaten letztendlich auch dazu bewegen und überzeugen, dass die Entwicklungszusammenarbeit ein wesentlicher und wichtiger Baustein der europäischen Politik ist.
Mich würde daher vor allem dann auch interessieren, weil wir jeden Euro stärker rechtfertigen müssen denn je, wie Sie das Thema Job Creation sehen. Also ist die Schaffung von Arbeitsplätzen am Ende des Tages nicht auch eine gute Strategie, um zu erklären, dass das die beste Investition ist im Kampf gegen Armut und im Sinne der menschlichen Entwicklung ist und gerade auch im Zusammenhang mit der Entwicklung resilienter Gesellschaften, wie Sie es angesprochen haben. Wir haben ja gesehen, was passiert, wenn externe Finanzierungsströme wie bei USAID, wenn diese ausfallen, aufgrund warum auch immer. Was dann mit den örtlichen Systemen passiert. Viele brechen dann einfach zusammen, weil sie nicht in sich geschlossen waren und aus sich selbst finanzieren konnten.
Das heißt, wie sehen Sie eventuell die Rolle dann auch und den Stellenwert von Global Gateway in Zukunft, damit wir dieses Instrument aktiv nutzen können, um resiliente Gesellschaften aufzubauen, sodass dann auch vor Ort Systeme eigenständig stehen und bestehen bleiben können, denn ich glaube, das ist tatsächlich die nachhaltigste Investition, die wir sowohl unseren Partnern erklären können als auch den Mitgliedstaaten, dass es sich lohnt, dies auch zu finanzieren. Vielen Dank.
Barry Andrews
Okay, thank you, Niels. And now we go to on behalf of S&D, I think it's Udo. Udo, you have the floor, please.
Udo Bullmann
Thank you very much, Chair, and thanks, Minister, for your introductory remarks. We Socialists and Democrats welcome that enormously, and we also see the Irish Presidency as a natural ally of this committee on the development work, and we would like to underscore how much we appreciate the position that the Irish government takes in the development debate. I allow myself to raise very frankly a question, beg my pardon to the representatives of the European institutions, I'm always trying to be very frank. Since I don't think that we have a holistic external action strategy in the European Union, we need to be more radical in our interpretation of where we have leverage and where we need to have leverage. The next item on the agenda today is the World Food Programme, and I can already anticipate what colleagues will tell us, that the demand is rising and that we are not able to fulfill the requirements, not only in humanitarian aid, but also in nutrition, etc., etc.
So how about the man-made conflicts that we are facing, and when are we ready to touch about also the root causes of that?
I allow myself to say as a German Social Democrat that I fully appreciate the position that the Irish government takes on the Middle East conflict because this is one of the reasons. But let me also ask, and this is the very question, when do we stop those who fool into the conflicts in Africa by sending weapons, by having their economic interests unsatisfied and risking thousands and thousands of people to be killed in Sudan, in Congo and elsewhere? And is the Irish presidency ready also to question our trade endeavors where we start to negotiate with, and I mention them, states of the Arab Peninsula who permanently fool into conflicts with no regard to the human costs in Africa and for African people?
Barry Andrews
Okay, thank you, Udo. And Patriots not here, ECR not present, so I will ask a question for Renew, if I may, and then we'll come back to you with the first three.
So yeah, on Global Europe, I understand that Minister Byrne wants to have, make a lot of progress in September. And our main anxiety, or my main anxiety, is the overall figure of 200 billion and the extent to which that will be reduced as a result of pressures in other parts of the budget. I'm very, very concerned about that. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how the Irish presidency will, despite the honest broker role, try to preserve to the greatest extent the amount of that envelope that is currently proposed by the Commission. Secondly, what is your view on the idea of European preference, which is expressed in Article 20 of the Global Europe instrument?
Ireland has consistently supported untied aid, principled untied aid based on international agreements and aid effectiveness principles. How do you see Ireland reconciling its traditional untied aid position with the direction of travel as expressed in Article 20? Also a question on the Global Europe instrument is on the requirement for 90% of the instrument to be spent on items that comply with the OECD DAC criteria.
According to the instrument, this can be changed by a delegated act. And my understanding is a delegated act should only be used where it does not go to the substantial part of the legislation. So do you think this is an appropriate idea that this can be changed by delegated act? I have a number of other questions but I don't want to take too long and so let's go back to you, Niall, for your responses to those initial questions, then we'll go back to the members.
Niamh Smyth
Thank you very much, Barry, or Chair, thank you very much everyone for your questions. Niels, I'll start off with your key point and I think absolutely job creation is key to any sound policy of development cooperation. It is the full holistic approach that first and foremost you're looking to do the right thing to improve the standard of living of those who live in the most abject levels of poverty. And in order to get them to the position where they become trading partners, you also need to invest in their education systems, their healthcare systems, their transport infrastructure, to make sure that there is political stability, democratic stability, and the chance for peace because these are all the conditions that make job creation effective.
It's not good enough to simply say that there is an economic solution to all these problems. That's, that's not the world that we live in. So we want to make sure that we continue to use a development instrument that is key to making sure that societies in the global South grow the best form possible so that they do become those partners. I think from Ireland's specific experience, Ireland has 14 program country partners in the global South. And I think of one key example, our relationship with Vietnam, for example, today is completely different than it was 25 years ago.
Then, as a development partner, it was very much about how we provided the real core basic support. Now, even EU-Vietnam trade agreement, now Vietnam is increasingly one of Ireland's largest trading partners in Southeast Asia, and indeed we use Vietnam as our staging post to do, to work in terms of development in countries like Cambodia and Laos. So this is what the aim should be, to build up that level of job creation. But unfortunately, you cannot create jobs in an economic environment if you don't invest in the systems. And it really is key that we stress that these are investments.
And how do we use Global Gateway to be part of that is key. Global Gateway is a brilliant idea.
Global Gateway is not a replacement for development cooperation, but it needs to work hand in glove. And we need to make sure that we, in the next phase of Global Gateway, make sure that it's actually accessible for all European partners, that all EU member states, regardless of size, have full access to Global Gateway. And crucially, that the SMEs that represent 95% of the businesses in our Union have full access to Global Gateway. But I think it is a real key partner within that overall creation. Udo, thank you very much for your comments in relation to Ireland's very long-standing development position.
As a bit of trivia, 20 years ago, I was an accredited parliamentary assistant to Gay Mitchell when he was an MEP and the EPP coordinator on this very committee. I had a lot more hair and I was a lot fresher-faced then. But a lot of the issues that we're discussing today that you raise are very, very key. And I think, I think when we look at where we are in the world today and the shifting geopolitical crises, we do not give enough attention to the fact that in 2024, at the height of human development, we have two man-made famines in our world. There are two regions on our planet where people are suffering the levels of famine that those of us who grew up in the 1980s would have seen on our television screens.
That abject level of desperation is here, and it is driven by man-made actions. It is driven by the lust for power and the levels of conflict that are absolutely barbaric.
I'd like to take a moment, particularly when you focus on Sudan and the Horn of Africa more broadly. I met the EU Special Representative for the Horn of Africa in Dublin last week, and we went into the detail of the recent massacres in places like Kordofan and El Obeid. And yes, the real fact is that we have an arms embargo dating back to 2014 that is not being recognized. It's not being recognized by many states and many manufacturers, including those within the European Union. And that's something we need to tackle.
We need to look in the next number of months at a UN multilateral level, how do we make sure that there's a real arms embargo, that we are not allowing this region to descend into further chaos. It's a regular issue in our own domestic parliament that's brought up by the opposition in parliamentary questions every month. And it is my responsibility there to speak with partners in the wider region about their obligations and our very real concerns. And they're very clear of Ireland's government position, and indeed the EU has to be confident in its own ability. And I think crucially, the demand is going up and up for development cooperation.
The demand is going up for humanitarian support across the world.
And sadly, that's coming at a time when far too many states are cutting back on their development programs. Chair, that leads me into your, to your questions more broadly about the multiannual financial framework and the Global Europe instrument contained therein. And you're right, our minister for responsibility, the European Affairs, said at the General Affairs Council that he intends to use the next number of weeks for a series of bilateral engagements to make sure that we bring the level of negotiations and discussions to a really key position in September. And obviously, we are, are bound by our role as the honest broker, as the presidency, to make sure that we deliver a budget for the EU that is operational. And it is key that it can meet the demands.
I actually remember quite distinctly in 2013, the last time Ireland had the presidency was at the same point in the budgetary calendar. And that was a very different time when we were coming out of the financial crash. And indeed, we're coming out of a very real crisis, not just in Ireland, but across our union. But we were able to absolutely secure a budget that was able to provide for the union as a whole. And I think we can achieve that again.
And my, my comments prior to Ireland taking on the presidency of 1st of July are very well documented about the need to make sure that humanitarian and development cooperation is protected within the budget. It is so crucially important at a union level, particularly when so many member states, unfortunately, are not in a position to maintain or increase their own domestic budgets.
Obviously Ireland is not one of those. In terms of the very real issue on, on European preference contained within Article 20 and how does that relate to Ireland's long-standing position that will not shift, that we don't believe in the concept of untied aid. This is obviously something that we will work with European partners. We understand very clearly the sentiment, and I understand the very real frustration. Like you, Chair, I've been over the last year to Africa about a dozen times.
I've visited projects that have had great, received great support from the likes of Global Gateway, as Niels mentioned, but also from wider European funding. But to look at the projects, they're all branded with the flags of other countries from outside our European Union. And I think that's something that is causing understandable frustration when we are competing very really for geopolitical influence in the world's most delicate of situations. And crucially, the, the, the comment in relation to the 90% of our development instrument that can apply with OECD DAC. Ireland are big believers in OECD DAC.
We think all EU member states should be, and we think that we can achieve as a Union a budget that is absolutely in line with those requirements. Thank you.
Barry Andrews
Okay, thank you, Niels. And let's move to, next speaker is Erik Marquardt for the Greens.
Erik, you have the floor for two minutes.
Erik Marquardt
Yes, thanks a lot. I will speak in German. Ja, vielen Dank schon mal für die ganzen Ausführungen und auch das Interesse und das Engagement in dem Bereich, um den wir uns hier heute kümmern. Ich glaube, ich habe zwei Fragen. Das erste ist, wir reden ja nicht nur darüber, wie viel Geld wir ausgeben, sondern natürlich auch für was.
Und ich bin zum Beispiel im Innenausschuss, habe gestern eine Diskussion, aber eigentlich fast jede Woche dort Diskussionen, bei denen es darum geht, wie kann man innovative Ansätze in der Migrationspolitik besser fördern. Und es ist interessant, weil der Innenausschuss, DG HOME, gar nicht allzu viel Geld hat. Und wenn man fragt, wo soll denn das Geld jetzt zum Beispiel herkommen für Return Hubs, für gestern ging es um Multi-Purpose Centers in Afrika, also alle neuen Ideen, dann kommt ganz oft: Ja, das kommt dann vielleicht von Global Europe. Und ich wollte fragen, wie Ihre Einschätzung dazu ist. Wir geben ja auch schon im NDICI Geld für Migrationskontrolle oder Migrationsprojekte aus.
Das Ziel war eigentlich, da maximal 10 % auszugeben. Jetzt sind es, glaube ich, 18 %.
Also inwiefern kann man denn verhindern oder sollte man überhaupt verhindern aus Ihrer Sicht, dass dann Migrationsprojekte, die eigentlich der Abwehr von Migration oder der Verhinderung von Flucht aus Krisensituationen dienen, durch Entwicklungszusammenarbeitsgelder bezahlt werden? Und das zweite ist ein mehr allgemeines Thema, das ich ansprechen wollte. Wir sehen ja an verschiedenen Stellen, dass es durch den Aufstieg von Rechtspopulisten viel Debatten um einzelne Ausgaben in der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit gibt. In Deutschland gab es beispielsweise eine Debatte um Fahrradwege in Peru. Und egal, wie man jetzt dazu steht, ist es sozusagen so, dass dann ein kleiner Teil eines großen Budget, das viel gute Sachen macht, herausgegriffen und skandalisiert wird.
Ähnlich ist es, glaube ich, auch, weil die Niederlande hat irgendwie jetzt gegen Marokko Fußball verloren und jetzt kommen die Rechtspopulisten in den Niederlanden und sagen, irgendwas muss man gegen Straßenbahnen in Marokko machen oder so. Und das sind ja viele dieser Themen, bin gleich zu Ende, bei denen ich glaube, dass es viel wichtiger ist, mehr darüber zu sprechen, was wir eigentlich für Erfolge in der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit, in der humanitären Hilfe haben, was das viele Steuergeld, das dort reinfließt, ja, aber was das viele Steuergeld eben auch dazu beiträgt, dass Menschen anderswo entweder weniger leiden müssen oder man beispielsweise Konflikte schon verhindert, bevor sie entstehen, was dann wieder den Gesellschaften hilft.
Was sind denn Ihre Gedanken? Wie können wir präsenter machen, was wir mit der europäischen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit eigentlich so alles voranbringen und damit auch mehr Vertrauen in der Bevölkerung schaffen und da vielleicht dafür sorgen, dass Populisten es nicht so einfach haben, Dinge zu skandalisieren, die im Grunde eigentlich ganz gut funktionieren.
Barry Andrews
Okay, thank you, Erik. And now Robert, Robert Biedroń is the DEVE rapporteur on the Global Europe instrument. Robert, you have two minutes.
Robert Biedroń
Thank you very much, Chair, and dear Minister Joutra-Lalla, thank you very much for being with us. I don't know how long you are being in this room, but before you came, we had this testing vote. We were judging your presidency already after two weeks, and I must tell you, everyone was in favor except one person. So my wish is that when you come back after half a year, a year, you will have the same result. And I keep fingers crossed for you and also congratulate you for your ambitious priorities for presidency and thank you for mentioning Ukraine.
It's an existential threat to all of us. It should be a priority and it's very important that your devotion in that.
But it was mentioned by chair, I'm also the co-rapporteur to Global Europe and thank you for mentioning and also calling your call for strong and robust budget, EU budget for our actions and indeed it's we are creating and we have a feeling we are creating a superpower, EU superpower with this instrument. But to be the superpower we need two things: we need money and we need to know what we are spending this money wisely for. And for that I'm calling that you will defend the budget on the heading three for for that if we want to deliver on the issues you said we need to finance it properly and this is also your role and sorry to put it on your shoulders that you will defend in MFF this heading three and Global Europe. There are a lot of attempts to cut it on external action, but I tell you and you know it better than me that the world is watching us. You said we became a significant player globally on development and humanitarian aid also after US withdrawal, but that's an obligation.
This is something what we need to deliver, because if not us, who will be able to deliver on that? So my call is, Minister, that you stay devoted. I know you are, but I wish you a lot of energy, strength, and remember that this committee is on your side on that. Keeping us crossed. Thank you, Minister.
This is a responsibility.
Barry Andrews
Thank you, Robert. Okay, that's it from the members. So, Neil, if you could deal with those questions, please. Thank you. Oh, I beg your pardon.
Lara has a question. Lara is S&D from Spain. Lara, you have the floor.
Leire Pajín
Thank you, Chair. I'm going to speak in Spanish. Muchas gracias, Ministro, por acompañarnos hoy y por el compromiso de su país con el derecho internacional humanitario, con el desarrollo y también con la salud global. Como bien usted ha dicho, en un mundo cargado de retos y con un sistema humanitario prácticamente colapsado, el compromiso de la Unión Europea es más importante que nunca. Usted ha hablado de la necesidad de blindar el derecho humanitario internacional y yo le quiero agradecer ese compromiso, como se lo quiero agradecer también su compromiso por la situación de Gaza, de garantizar el acceso a la ayuda humanitaria y de redoblar nuestros esfuerzos de diplomacia humanitaria y de diplomacia política para poner fin a este genocidio y a este conflicto.
Sabe que encontrará aquí el apoyo de este Parlamento, también de países como España. Quiero también hablar de la salud global porque quiero agradecerle que para también en su programa la salud global ocupe un lugar predominante. Hemos aprobado la comunicación de ayuda humanitaria hace unos días, como usted mismo ha mencionado, también tenemos pendiente y lo así lo hicimos la de la iniciativa de salud global. Estamos viendo con el brote del ébola y también desde la experiencia del COVID la importancia de fortalecer las capacidades de prevención, anticipación y respuesta de los países del sur global y de trabajar conjuntamente en salud global y creemos que la Unión Europea debe ser un un líder absoluto e indiscutible en esta materia. Por eso les quería preguntar acerca de sus objetivos concretos en materia de salud global para este semestre y también cómo va a trabajar para desplegar los objetivos de ayuda humanitaria y de diplomacia humanitaria.
Muchas gracias.
Barry Andrews
And sorry, one more from Marette Mai. Marette, you have the floor for two minutes. Thank you.
Marit Maij
Yes, thank you very much. I will be brief. I didn't want to ask the question because I have to leave in four minutes for a vote somewhere else, but still I want to make the point and I want to thank you, Minister, for being here and also for supporting your your agenda, which included gender equality.
And I think this is a super important point. It's very much under pressure here in Parliament in many of the topics that we're working on, but specifically also when it comes to international cooperation, to humanitarian assistance. We see still that poverty often, very often, has the face of a woman. When we talk about atrocities taking place in situations, you talked about the Horn of Africa, Sudan, rape as a weapon of war, all these violations of human rights take place often very much also focused on the position of women in communities. And therefore I think it's super important that you have this on top of your agenda.
Agenda and I was I was going to ask you on how to how you're working on it also with the partners. Unfortunately, I will not be able to listen to your answer, but I think the the colleagues will and also my staff will, but again, thank you very much for taking this also as a priority.
Barry Andrews
Okay, thank you, Marette, and now back to Neil for his responses and maybe concluding remarks as well.
Niamh Smyth
Thanks very much, Chair. Marette, I'll stay with you I'll start with you if you have 90 seconds, not that 90 seconds is sufficient for the issues that you raised, but gender equality is absolutely key and it kind of goes to an element to a point that Eric touched on that I'll come back to in a sec. Um, we are facing a situation where the most vulnerable in the world are becoming the victims of someone else's culture war, where we literally have the decision to remove funding for gender programs, for maternal health programs, exposing women and girls in the poorest situation to abuses due to someone else's budgetary decision. And that is not acceptable. And the EU has a very clear responsibility and an obligation to fill the gap where they can, but more importantly, to push back against this narrative that somehow stopping women girls being married off at the age of 13 to their uncle is is okay.
I sat with the survivors of GBV in in some of the refugee camps that I've visited, which I know some of you have done throughout your career, and there is nothing more harrowing than listening to a 19-year-old girl talk about seeing her sister being raped by 15 soldiers on top of the dead body of her brother. Not nice to say things like that. It's not certainly something that any of us are comfortable speaking about, but this is what punch through.
We can talk about numbers, we can talk about finance, we can talk about political discussions and shout at each other across the chambers, but when you're talking about humanitarian response and international rule of law, it is so vital that we, the elected representatives of the people at a European level, at a member state level, remember that what we're talking about is people. It's not numbers, it's not ideology, it's people. And that's why gender equality has to be central to everything we do. It always should be central, but at the moment when it is becoming an issue that other people are using as a pushback narrative, it requires all of us, regardless of the political badge that we wear, to make sure that it's prioritized. I wish I could speak about that for another hour, but hopefully I've addressed some of the key point that you made there and underscored our key commitment.
What I want to go back to in that regard, Eric, to your key points in relation to what we're looking to spend development cooperation funding on, and I should have gone to, I should, I didn't answer Chair in detail in relation to your point on the use of a delegated act, that would of course be from a member state point of view something that Ireland would watch very closely and as strong believers in the OECD DAC are very keen to make sure that there's full adherence. But I think when we talk about, when people talk about migration and the debate of migration more broadly, what is the, what is the key source of migration? What is the root cause? It is poverty.
It is inequality. So when we're talking about conflict when we're talking about hunger when we're talking about the persecution of minorities the persecution of women when we're talking about an inability to access health systems when we're talking about the crippling impacts of the climate emergency it is generally focused on those in the global south and those in the toughest of situations. So if people are serious about migration as an issue and tackling irregular mass migration you tackle the root causes first. And you make sure that you have a development cooperation policy that addresses the root causes. The two countries that sent the most refugees to Europe last year were Syria and Mali.
And they're two countries that saw their development infrastructure completely collapse with the withdrawal not just of funding from USAID but also from EU member states. So that's something that we always need to talk about when we talk about where the spending is and I really really welcome ruthless scrutiny of all our aid budgets.
The ability as a minister in a domestic setting to go into our public accounts committee and be able to account for our development spending to the very last cent is vital for guaranteeing that level... and this is a point, Robert, that you made as well. It's vital to ensuring that level of public confidence that we are spending correctly, because it is so easy for an influencer or a shock jock to take a funding program out of context and belittle it. We saw that in the US. We saw that with the act of DOGE, when they use projects out of context to completely rubbish generations of life-saving work by USAID and other bodies. And I know that there are actors within the European Union who are relishing doing that.
They do it in a domestic audience. We see it at a ministerial level, at Foreign Affairs Council. But we have a responsibility to push back, and this goes to a wider point about how we talk about development cooperation and humanitarian support more broadly in the... in the more wider context of the challenges that we're facing today. Public support is probably the same now as it was 20, 25 years ago when many of us marched to make poverty history. However, what we have is a changing media landscape and a social media landscape which provides amplification for minority opinions, often that aren't based in fact.
So therefore we have to meet people where we're at. We have to show people that development cooperation is inherently the right thing to do. As Europeans, it's a treaty obligation first and foremost, and we can't forget that.
But not only is it the right thing to do, it is clearly in our interests. And all the issues that are raised when we go home to our constituencies, when you go home in green weeks, when you go to your clinics, all the issues raised all stem from global insecurity. And you tackle global insecurity first and foremost with a principled, values-led development policy. Because, Robert, we are the superpower now when it comes to development cooperation. The EU and its member states is more or less 50%, over 50% of development cooperation.
Throw in our friends in Norway and the UK and we're two-thirds. It's a huge amount of responsibility being placed on our shoulders and the world is watching. Well, what is our response? The demands are getting greater. We need to make sure, of course, that we defend Heading 6, because we make sure that as the significant player, that we can continue to stand by our words with real not just financial action, but to also Eric's point, that we show trustworthy, clear spending that bring countries in the Global South on a development path.
That they do become our trading partners, that then they are just worrying about job creation. But we make sure that we have programs first and foremost that give people the chance to live in their own countries, to access very basic needs when it comes to health service, education and so much else.
It is also something that when it comes to geopolitical influence, if we remove EU spending and EU member state spending from so many countries around the world, we are merely creating the space for malevolent actors. So if we're really serious about tackling the influence of Russia or China, will you make sure you don't give them the space in sub-Saharan Africa to fill the gap? And just on your point of Ukraine, Ireland has a really ambitious program to make sure that the next time Ireland has the EU presidency, that it is with Ukraine as a full member of the European Union, as well as Moldova. And just in conclusion, Chair, in relation to the points that were made in terms of Gaza more generally, our support is quite clear. We passed legislation in Ireland just ten days ago in relation to that, but crucially, top of our agenda has always been in terms of getting humanitarian aid into those who are most impacted.
And I must recognize that yes, Ireland increased its development budget last year, but so did Spain. And I've no doubt that many other member states are going to increase theirs next year. And I really do look forward to working with partners within the Council to make sure that's reflected at member state as well as a Union budget. But more pertinently, in relation to global health objectives, we look at the three pillars of the European Union, but you look at where the most need is. And a lot of that is responding first and foremost to food security.
We pushed back strongly at an EU Council level when when funding to UNRWA was cut or frozen.
As I said, we have two man-made famines in the world at the moment. We have serious issues with child malnutrition. That is of course a food security issue, but it is a global health issue. Vaccination progress is a key part of this as well. For the past 25 years, we've seen reductions in HIV/AIDS infections.
They went up last year. And that's what happens. That is the human cost. More people are dying of AIDS this year than last year because budgets have been cut. The same can be said for malaria, and crucially the same can be said for maternal health and sexual and reproductive health.
The lack of funding often for the last 10% is causing young women to die in the most abject conditions around the world. And we have a responsibility through our global health instruments that they are fit for purpose and that we will absolutely push that through as a policy level as well as a budgetary level in our presidency. At this stage, I should provide an element of concluding remarks.
Can I just say that it is a huge honor and a privilege to appear before this committee and also to be given the opportunity at the early stage of Ireland's presidency to lay out an agenda that is ambitious to be quite frank. And when it comes to this sectoral area, we believe this is something from a presidency point of view we can bring a slightly different approach to than perhaps for the last number of years and we certainly want to work as collaboratively with all institutions to make sure we continue to highlight Europe's very real responsibility when it comes to development cooperation and humanitarian action. We have quite a number of events laid out both in Dublin and crucially here in Brussels as well as others across the region. I'll travel to Accra and Ghana for the EU Sahel meeting in October, for example. And I think how we can make our presidency a success and as I said it is our eighth time holding the presidency.
I worked as a staffer on the last one in 2013. Chair, you may have been a minister at the one in 2004, a bit young for that maybe, but I know our Prime Minister was, our Taoiseach. But I'll finish with a really key point about our presidency and our approach. Everything we do is about people, it's about humans. And that can be a minister like me appearing before the DEVE committee today or indeed my senior colleague appearing before AFET yesterday.
I think our finance minister is in front of ECON today. But it's making sure that those appearances very much are about the people that we seek to work for across the European Union. We take that responsibility very seriously as presidency. It's why we've laid out very clear pillars of competitiveness, security and values. And when it comes to values and security, there's nothing more intertwined when it comes to European values and protection of European security than a strong development cooperation and humanitarian approach.
And I think that's why everything we will do will be interlocking, but this is a key committee to make sure it's part of it. Thank you all very much for the time, thank you very much for your continued work.
Barry Andrews
Well, thank you Neil, that was a very, very reassuring presentation. Thank you for your comprehensive responses to all of the questions of the members. We really appreciate the detail in which you have gone with the questions that have been raised. And I certainly feel really reassured that the agenda of this committee will be fully defended and represented in the Council over the next six months. And I wish you well and I wish your team well.
It's a huge pressure at a very crucial time for the EU and its development cooperation and humanitarian aid agenda. So thank you very much on behalf of the members. We'll take a short break and we will resume at 11 o'clock. Thank you.
Let's move on to item nine for this morning and this is the the global food security which we've heard a little bit about from the Irish presidency just now will be a major priority for the development minister in the Irish presidency. So it's my privilege to welcome Mr. Carl Skau who is the acting executive director of the World Food Programme.
We meet at a time when global food security faces unprecedented threats from conflict and climate shocks to economic instability and supply chain disruptions, not least due to the fallout from the Middle East conflict. At the same time, global funding to fight poverty and food insecurity is declining, forcing many organizations to hyper-prioritize their operations and reduce assistance levels. World Food Programme stands at the frontline of the response, so we look forward to hearing your assessment of the current challenges to food security worldwide, how you cope with declining funding levels, and the changes to the environment in which humanitarian actors operate. We are eager to explore how the World Food Programme and the EU can collaborate even more effectively and to hear how World Food Programme's work can inform the EU's future multiannual financial framework and Global Europe instrument. This dialogue is an opportunity to strengthen our partnership, address pressing challenges in key humanitarian hotspots, and ensure that our policies and funding mechanisms in a nexus logic across the development and humanitarian fields are fit for purpose in a world where hunger and food insecurity continues.
Allow me also to mention here that our committee has often relied on World Food Programme's excellent support during our field missions. I'd like to thank you and your colleagues for that, and in particular, on a personal note, I'd like to thank your team in Beirut for hosting me in March when I visited Lebanon just a few months ago.
So, Mr. Skau, you're very welcome again, Carl, and the floor is yours.
Carl Skau
Is this on? Yes. Thank you, thank you, Chair, and really thanks for all delegates who have made it here despite I know that summer is around the corner and I, but I really appreciate this opportunity and we do so from WFP, always an honor to be able to address this, this group, and to do so also following the Irish presidency where we are looking forward to that leadership that Ireland always have provided on global food security. I will start in Ukraine because I know there is a lot of attention on Ukraine in this city always, but also in the past few days and also having the President of the Commission in Ukraine at the moment. But also because I was there last week.
I spent ten days. As you may know, we are the largest actor on the front lines. We have field offices from Odessa in the south all along the front line up to Kharkiv in the north. And I have done regular, almost quarterly visits to Ukraine since the war started. And so I can compare a little bit also on how the situation has evolved.
And last time I was there was early March, where the country was just coming out of this brutal winter. But now I must say, you know, people are really suffering, not least on the front lines. It was almost worse, frankly, than early March and the brutal winter time that I saw then. And the reason for that is that the activity around drones have really picked up. When I was in Donetsk, they registered some 1400, 1400 drone attacks in only 24 hours.
And the area of attacks have expanded. So what has been called the kind of killing zone, let's say, from the active front line into the Ukrainian territory, in the past was 15 kilometers. That has now expanded to 50 kilometers. So we are talking about thousands, tens of thousands of people who are now affected of this massive drone attacks. I met families on the front lines who had just now decided to leave or had been forced to leave because their houses had been destroyed or damaged.
And if civilians who have remained for these past four years are now deciding to break up and leave, I think that speaks to the fact that the situation is deteriorating. These frontline towns, the roads are completely covered in these drone nets that you may have seen on pictures. It's an unreal experience, frankly, to be living for days under those drone nets. But nevertheless, those drones find their way through and causing a lot of damage to civilians. It's also increasing the threats to us humanitarians.
As WFP, two weeks ago, we had a hit on one of our vehicles. Four weeks ago, we had a major hit by a missile on our main warehouse outside Dnipro. And so this year, only six months into this year, we've had more incidents than we had all of last year. And last year was the record year in terms of incidents. So civilians are being hammered in a new way, but also humanitarians trying to provide to those civilians on the frontline.
I wanted to speak to this because this is kind of the human dimension, if you will, of the war in Ukraine. While important discussions are taking place on the military strategies, it's important to also bring that to attention.
I had the chance also to have a senior EU official, Olof Skoog, the political director of the EEAS, with me for 24 hours because of the challenge for diplomats to make it to that active front line. And I hope that left an impression that will always, that will now also be present in the political discussions here in Brussels. WFP, as I said, continues though to deliver despite these challenges. We are assisting some 700,000 people on those front lines every month. We do so with cash, with food, sometimes both cash and food, depending on how the markets are functioning.
We do so through providing school meals to children who are attending school in these bunkers. It was heartening to see that now during the summer period when schools are closed, children were still showing up at these bunker schools for playing because it's the only safe place for them to be. And we have also worked to try to bring small and medium-sized farmers back on their land by providing what we call survey and release. It's a way of quickly identify what areas of land are contaminated by mines or other explosives, but then to clear so that farmers can come back on the other parts of land. It's important for food security, but it's also important for the resilience of those front line communities.
And I tell this story about Ukraine because I know that you care, but it also represents the global picture, if you will, in terms of WFP's work and in terms of global food insecurity. In summary, three baskets of challenges.
One is the needs. We now have some 300 million people who are acutely food insecure. It's a threefold increase in the past five years. When we received the Nobel Peace Prize back in 2020, it was 100 million. This is mainly driven by conflict, but it's also of layers of shocks.
We of course had the COVID crisis, then the Ukraine war and now the crisis in the Middle East that we fear if it continues will drive these numbers up even more. The most immediate humanitarian impact of course in the region, not least in Lebanon as chair mentioned, but also the secondary effects. The price of food and energy is very closely correlated, especially in the poorest countries. And those countries, the most vulnerable, are already spending all their income on food. And so if the price of energy goes up 30, 40%, the food price goes up 20, 30% and people are eating 20, 30% less.
And if you're then already without margins, that means that acute hunger is driving up. So the first basket of challenges we see is that the numbers of acutely food insecure keep increasing. The second basket of challenge is the funding.
So last year, WFP only saw a 40% cut in our resources year on. It's the largest cut that we have ever, ever seen. And it's frankly represents the overall envelope as well. It's not that we were particularly targeted, and it's across the board, the US, but also many important European donors. We had to lay off some 6,000 staff, but more importantly, of course, we have had to cut drastically in some of our key operations.
In Afghanistan, for example, we've gone from supporting some 9 million people to 1.5 million people. In Somalia, from 6 million people to barely a million people. And I would point to Somalia and Afghanistan, possibly also adding Yemen, as the crisis where we are most underfunded. I think in Afghanistan, some 8% of the ask has been funded. So we are really seeing a funding crunch in some of these operations.
It's across the board, but in some operations, it's really hitting us very hard. The third basket of issues is, I guess, what you can refer to as, you know, the challenge to the rules-based order, and for us, really, the challenge to international humanitarian law. And it comes in different forms. I mean, I think my most immediate concern is around security for humanitarian staff.
We have never seen as many humanitarians be killed in the line of duty. In Yemen right now, WFP has 38 of our colleagues who have been detained by the Houthis. They have been stuck in those cells in Sana'a now for several, several months, just as an illustration of how dangerous and how difficult it is for our staff to operate. The second is on access. And I think it's clear that actors involved in war are seeing food as a potential leverage and as a weapon of war.
And we see that in many contexts at the moment. And they do so without consequence, without accountability. And the sense of impunity is something that we sense in our operations as we negotiate at checkpoints and with groups that need to allow our passage. So, and the third element around IHL, and the list is long, is around new conditionalities coming from different donors, including, you know, our long-standing partners, that frankly run counter to the basic humanitarian principles. So there is a whole set of challenges related to the humanitarian principles and the IHL coming from all sides.
So this is the perfect storm if you will that we are facing at WFP. Despite that again like I said on Ukraine we are delivering. In Gaza we are providing to the entire population on a monthly basis. In Sudan despite the massive challenges we were able to scale up to some 5 million people including 2 million in the hardest to reach areas. We have now had to contract that because of a funding crunch but not because we are not able to deliver or because we don't have the access.
And and so across the world from Lebanon to Haiti to Myanmar every day we get up and we get the job done despite these headwinds that I just referred to. For the committee and for the EU and for our partners at large I would point to five asks. I think number one is to keep bringing food security high on the political agenda. We are in unprecedented times with historic high levels of food insecurity. Last year we had two famines confirmed in Sudan and Gaza and you know that hasn't happened in decades.
So really put food security high on the political agenda. The second is to use tools of diplomacy to bring an end to all these conflicts that are driving food insecurity and frankly to pay attention and to prevent new ones from arising.
We can't deal and cope with more conflict around the corner. We're already seeing more conflict and conflict related crisis than we have seen since the Second World War and so really an effort around diplomacy and the tools of diplomacy. And here I think Europe has an important role to play and there is more to do for Europe. There is a lot of demand as I travel around for European leadership in finding political solutions to conflict. The third is around IHL.
And you know the frameworks are there. That's not the problem. It's the implementation and it's accountability that is the issue. And so again we appeal to member states and to and to the international community to make sure that there is accountability and that this sense of of impunity is is being challenged and of course to try to apply these principles of IHL as consistently across crisis as possible. That's the only way to be effective in holding parties to account.
Third is to act earlier.
I want to flag, for example, that we have now all the data necessary to predict that the El Niño, the weather events related to El Niño later this year, are going to be the most extreme in decades. That will mean drought in Southern Africa, floods in the Horn of Africa, droughts in Central America, where I'm heading now. And so we already know that from the data that has been collected. We also know what can be done to then help mitigate the impact, both on people but also on infrastructure and on farming. And so we need to act earlier.
An investment by a dollar in anticipatory action, in prevention, saves us ten dollars in response. So it's the right thing to do because it brings down the suffering and the damage, but it's also the smart thing to do from an economic, financial point of view. And the fifth is around funding. And here is where you are absolutely critical. I mean, the Commission has been the only one standing, if you will, in these past couple of years.
And I hope that will continue to be the case, not only to keep the system running, but also as an inspiration and frankly an encouragement to others to do more. The problem is not the lack of funding or available resources. I mean, when you look at the stock exchanges across the rich world or at expenditure done on defense, it's clear that there is enough resources. We have asked for some thirteen billion dollars this year.
We hope to reach half. But that 13 billion dollars is about what the war in Iran costed in 10 days. And so I think just to give an illustration of the fact that, you know, the resources are of course available to eradicate hunger, to deal with all those 300 million that are acutely food insecure. But it is a matter of bringing it to the front and making sure that it is invested. I think there is a strong case from a solidarity, from a humanitarian point of view, but there is clearly also a strong case to make from a self-interest point of view given the close correlation or the link between food insecurity and stability.
That link was recognized by the Nobel Committee when we received the Nobel Peace Prize back in 2020. It was true then, I would say it's even more true today. So I want to end though by just thanking you also for the excellent partnership that we have with the European Union, with its member states, with the Commission and beyond. It's a partnership that goes far beyond the financial relationship. It is one of ideas, about policy, about, you know, thinking ahead, but also one of politics and diplomacy.
And from a WFP point of view, we could not do without Europe. Europe is really the fundamental pillar in that multilateral approach and work that we do. And so we thank you and stand ready to do whatever we can to convince you that that's an investment that is worthwhile continuing to do. Thank you very much, Chair.
Barry Andrews
Okay, Carl, thank you very much. And very timely to bring up Ukraine. Our next session will be on Ukraine actually and the targeting of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. So it's also illustrative of the risks that humanitarian workers take where you went so close to the front line in Donetsk. And it's right that leaders like you should put themselves where you expect your staff and workers to go.
And I think that's a really strong message. And I know that in October, the Irish presidency will have a session, as Neale Richmond just told us, with Commissioner Lenarčič on the protection of humanitarian workers. So that's something for us to look forward to. Okay, so let's open the discussion. First of all, we'll start with the EPP.
And for EPP is Niels Geuking, who has the floor for two minutes.
Niels Geuking
I speak in German, so please use the headphone. Ja, vielen Dank für den, ja, es ist kein erfreulicher Ausblick, aber für diesen doch sehr weitgefächerten Rundumschlag, den Sie gemacht haben, natürlich mit dem Schwerpunkt Ukraine im Eingang, aber dann auch auf die anderen Krisenherde dieser Welt, auf die Sie Einfluss genommen haben und auf die Sie auch dann zu sprechen kamen. Wir haben in der Tat große Schwierigkeiten und Probleme in der westlichen Welt, Gelder noch zu mobilisieren und sie zu rechtfertigen aufgrund der Haushaltslage, so wie wir sie in vielen Mitgliedstaaten dann auch vorfinden. Aber ich gebe Ihnen auch recht, dass wir offen über eine Diskussion über gewisse Priorisierungen sprechen sollten und müssen. Aber das sollte uns nicht davon abhalten, auch zu schauen, wie wir die Gelder, die dann zur Verfügung stehen, auch möglichst effizient und maximal so ausgelegt und investiert bekommen, dass sie auch bei den Menschen vor Ort ankommen.
Und in der letzten Ausschusswoche, da war ein UN-Vertreter hier, und da sprachen wir auch über den Sudan.
Und da ist dann auch klar geworden, dass es neben den Preisgestaltungsproblematiken, die Sie beschrieben haben, gerade in der Verzahnung mit Energie- und Lebensmittelpreisen, dass wir auch Probleme vor Ort sehen. Dass wir illegale Beschlagnahmungen sehen, dass wir illegale künstliche Steuererhebungen sehen und die dann auch am Ende des Tages die Lebensmittel vor Ort für die Menschen teilweise unerschwinglich machen und das auch ein Treiber der Not vor Ort ist. Wie ist da Ihre Erfahrung? Was können wir oder müssen wir da besser machen, damit dann tatsächlich dann auch die Mittel, die wir einsetzen, bei den Menschen vor Ort ankommen? Welchen Hebel sehen Sie aufgrund Ihrer langjährigen Erfahrung, welcher wirklich wirkt, um dann vor Ort dann solche künstlichen Preistreibereien mit humanitärer Hilfe dann auch zu verhindern?
Und Sie sprachen Afghanistan an. Wir haben ja in Afghanistan am Ende des Tages, ich habe mir gerade die Zahlen noch mal kurz angeschaut, wir haben fast über zwei Billionen und mehr investiert mit dem gesamten Einsatz, kriegerisch wie humanitär. Humanitär sind fast 150 Milliarden geflossen. Ich glaube, wir können heute kaum davon sprechen, dass Afghanistan von Erfolg geprägt ist, sondern da stellt sich dann eher die Frage: Was lief da eigentlich nach Ihrer Auffassung schief? Wo haben wir in Afghanistan den großen Fehler gemacht, dass wir am Ende des Tages, obwohl wir über ein Jahrzehnt und länger in diesem Land involviert waren, dass wir heute eigentlich das Gegenteil von dem sehen, was wir uns eigentlich alle erhofft hatten?
Also wie können Sie diese Rückschritte vielleicht für uns so greifbar machen, dass wir das Richtige vielleicht in anderen Situationen dann tatsächlich auch mal angehen können? Aus Fehlern muss man halt am Ende des Tages lernen und Sie sprachen von Geld und da haben wir so viel Geld, ich will jetzt nicht sagen versenkt, aber ich glaube, da kann niemand wirklich behaupten, dass das am Ende des Tages eine sinnvolle Investition war mit dem, was wir jetzt heutzutage da vorfinden. Das heißt, was muss besser werden, anders werden, vielleicht auch mit den Ländern vor Ort oder mit den Menschen vor Ort? Was können wir wirklich ändern und wo müssen wir uns eingestehen, gewisse Dinge müssen wir anerkennen und können wir dann doch nicht in dem Sinne ändern, wie wir es uns wünschen würden? Da würde mich Ihre Einschätzung interessieren.
Danke.
Barry Andrews
Okay, thank you, Niels. Next for S&D is Udo Bullmann. Udo, you have the floor for two minutes.
Udo Bullmann
Thanks very much, Director, for your introductory remarks. Very much welcome that you are here with us. Please let me welcome you also, I answer in a picture, let me welcome you as the boss of the fire brigade. And you go to your homelands and you say: "Don't stop the water supply because we need additional resources." And we would say: "Yes, of course, of course we have to talk about the issues that Niels brought up, rightly so, but in principle you need additional water supply."
And we should do that.
And Europe should stand to its words. But when do we start to discuss the outbreak of the wildfires and the very reason why and how to stop that? So climate change perhaps is the most difficult one because it's a long-lasting exercise to protect against and to transform. But there's a lot of conflicts, military conflicts that cause the problems you were mentioning, like in Sudan, Latinkorno, they are man-made, Gaza, man-made. And then you are talking rightly about diplomacy, the role of diplomacy.
But many of those who are permanently fooling into these conflicts by sending weapons, by having vested interests, the United Nations and ourselves in Europe, we welcome them as the so-called new donors. With the one hand they create military conflicts and with the other hand they supply some food supply or whatever. What do you think about that?
What can we do about it? And the United Nations system, for instance, could provide the G7 with a full list of those corporations, of those states who permanently break the embargo, permanently investing in military conflicts, and we go for the naming and shaming and we make it public. When we had the first resolution in the plenary last week, mentioning for the first time, and they are lobbying permanently the political groups, the Commission not to do that, for the first time we named a state in a resolution as being part of the conflict. They were sitting on the tribune, on the diplomat's seat, and they were writing and they were taking pictures and they were getting nervous. So we have an impact, but we should be bold enough to take that on board as part of our strategy for the Europeans also when we come to trade deals.
For the Greens, Isabella, please, Isabella Lövin, Greens.
Isabella Lövin
Thank you very much. I will speak in Swedish. Doesn't happen very often, but sorry, okay. Nu ska jag prata svenska.
Välkommen Carl Skau och det är verkligen ett välkommet ansikte här i parlamentet och överhuvudtaget i media. Jag tycker att du har en väldigt viktig roll att föra fram budskapet som du precis har gjort, hur enormt stora nedskärningarna är vad gäller stödet till World Food Programme och till det multilaterala systemet överhuvudtaget. Att vi behöver att EU står fast och att vi har varit den mest stabila partnern hittills och det glädjer mig väldigt mycket att höra att fokuset på diplomati och förebyggande måste stärkas när vi idag bara talar om upprustning och sluter oss inom våra gränser för att bara tala om intern säkerhet. Vi måste också vara medvetna om att det som sker utanför EU påverkar oss på många olika sätt. När det gäller just matsituationen och svälten i världen, att vi ska se ökad svält 2026, det är en skam verkligen.
International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, IPES rapporten som kom helt nyligen pekar ju på flera saker som behöver göras.
En, det kanske viktigaste, är att bygga motståndskraftiga lokala matproduktionssystem. Bara med det. Den andra viktiga faktorn är ju att bli fri från fossila bränslen, som ju är en väldigt volatil kostnad för inte minst fattigare länder, och att det också är kopplat till klimatförändringar. Och jag skulle gärna vilja höra din åsikt om hur också klimatkrisen påverkar mattillgången och matproduktionen i de fattigare länderna just nu. För vi, jag minns för tio år sedan redan så var ju det här högst påtagligt i till exempel Somalia och i, ja, i många länder söder om Sahara.
Ja, och jag vill bara säga att det är fruktansvärt att den internationella humanitära rätten undergrävs på det sättet som den görs. Och min sista fråga gäller, för du nämnde det här med villkorat bistånd från givare.
Och vi har ju sett i Gaza hur givare har sagt att det ska gå en viss kanal och man har inte velat gå via UNRWA som är den bästa kanalen naturligtvis. Och ja, hur kan det humanitära systemet värja sig från detta? Kan man tacka nej till bistånd om det är villkorat? Och vilken situation befinner ni er när det gäller det? Tack.
Barry Andrews
Okay, thank you Isabella. I will just ask a question if I may, Carl, about the United States. And you have outlined how in Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen there has been very, very dramatic reductions. Now, I think the US would have contributed around 4 billion dollars to World Food Programme prior to the current administration. And now we've had an additional 800 million dollars contribution from the US announced in June, but with important limitations.
It cannot be used for UN country-based pooled funds and it is not available for Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen.
So, how do you deal with these limitations, including the in-kind nature of US assistance? Yes, so essentially that's the question I wanted to ask you. And you've already sought to address it in your opening remarks, but maybe you get an opportunity to elaborate a little bit. Okay, over to you, Carl.
Carl Skau
Thank you for, for excellent questions and again, thank you really for being here and for spending time with me. I, I would like to start from EPP on the efficiency and effective, effectiveness, that you know, this is something we work with on a daily basis. Because we need now, when we have this bifurcation with needs going up, funding coming down, we need to make sure that we do our part in trying to tighten that, that gap. And so we are constantly reviewing our business practice to make sure that we are as efficient and effective as possible. We have, you know, cut dramatically at our HQ for example, making sure that as much resources as possible go into the field.
The only capacities we have at HQ are those that are critical to serve our country offices as an example. But it's also how we do support. So for example, cash is much more effective than, than is in-kind when there are markets that are functioning. So as soon as there are some markets that function, we move into cash.
But then as soon as possible, we also want to support self-reliance to break the cycles of dependence so that we can actually move and exit. And ultimately, our mission should always be to to get out, basically. The days when you were talking with pride about having been in a country 20, 30 years is gone. Then we have failed. Our mission should always be to support local communities, local authorities, local capacities for us to to depart.
And that is now at the center of what we do. Obviously, we're also working with others as part of the UN reform and other reforms that take place. And in that, WFP has been forward-leaning, mainly on three fronts. One is offering a joint integrated supply chain capacity. In the humanitarian sector, some 70% of the resources are supply chain related.
And so we came together with UNICEF offering one service to the entire system. And we know from our own experience that the economies of scale in that can bring huge savings that, of course, shouldn't be money going back to donors, but rather, you know, provide impact on the ground, reaching more people with better support. A second basket of reforms is around common services, as we call it. You know, at the country level, there are different actors. Not everyone should have their own office and car and whatever have you, but that we can kind of pool those resources.
And WFP being often 50% of the presence can then offer that to others. We do so on vehicles, for example, so that a smaller agency now doesn't have to buy a vehicle in order to be present. They can procure, they can lease one from us and we do that to the entire system just as examples of how, you know, we make sure that more of the money provided goes into to programs. And a third is on data. You know, individual actors and agencies in the humanitarian and UN sector had kind of owned their own data.
If we bring that together, you know, that provides really a better platform and not only to be aware but then to take appropriate action. And that's what we're seeing on the El Niño now, for example, where we're coming together with UNDP, FAO and others, IMO, the International Meteorological Organization, providing that data together suggesting an action plan on how we prevent the impact of this weather phenomenon. So thank you for the question on efficiency, effectiveness because I think it's key element. It's not only about getting more resource, it's also to make sure that we use the resource available in a smarter and more efficient way. And I think that answers a little bit your your question also around Afghanistan.
I mean, I'm there are, you know, many reports written on the past couple of decades in Afghanistan and what has gone wrong.
What I can say is that we need to focus more on breaking this cycle of dependence. The idea that we are supporting 10 millions in Afghanistan or we were supporting 10 million people in Afghanistan is of course a failure in itself. That is not how it should be but it was life-saving assistance and we know now that when we've had to cut down to almost 2 million that we are leaving behind widowed women with many children who have nowhere else to turn to. But the solution is of course not to continue to do so year after year. We need as I said to put at the center self-reliance resilience and to break that dependency.
But here comes the politics because of course that's not compatible with the current situation for women in that country where they are not allowed to work. So it needs to follow also political agenda and engagement to change the fundamentals if you will. But in the meantime you know we cannot leave these women and their children behind. We need to address their needs while there are also efforts being made on changing you know the political context and the situation more broadly for these women. And so but Afghanistan cannot be be forgotten and left to itself at this moment.
It needs more attention, I would argue, and it needs more engagement. It's a tough one, but it is possible. And I here want to really commend the work done by the EU delegation, being the only Western, together with Japan and a couple of others, presence on the ground. I think on S&D, I thank you for the kind of, you know, the analogy of the fire brigades and, you know, keep the water supply flowing, because indeed that's how it feels like. I mean, when we have the Ebola response in the East DRC, for example, now, you know, I have tens of colleagues signing up to deploy to search our capacity in Bunia.
They don't know if they're going to be able to go back to their home countries in the next few months because of different, you know, regulations that are put in place. But that's the spirit of running towards the fire, if you will, trying to address and contain this health emergency in the East DRC. But of course, what we need then is of course the resources to be able to continue to deliver.
And if I take the eastern DRC as an example, the funding is not coming forward by any means if you compare to previous similar outbreaks, including in the DRC itself. Another example is Lebanon, where we had, you know, an eruption of fighting two years ago and now again in the past couple of months, and where, you know, the response coming from donors has been about half or a third of what it was only two years ago. So, you know, we are up there, we are running, we are delivering, but we don't have that back support that you referred to in the same way that we were used to in the past. I mean, I think you point also to what I tried to set out in my introduction is that ultimately, you know, the root causes needs to be addressed. That's beyond WFP's mandate.
Climate change, no doubt, a big driver. I mean, El Niño I referred to, but there are also other crises on the Horn of Africa and elsewhere where we see the impact of those extreme weather events triggered by climate change that has a huge impact on food insecurity. And of course, the conflicts. But like you said, these are man-made problems, and the good thing with man-made problems is that they can be man-fixed, I guess. And so, you know, it's about political will to make that happen.
On the IHL part, you know, I think the issue here is accountability, to make sure there is a cost. That's not the sense, you know, when we engage with actors, with parties, there is a sense right now that everything goes.
And I can tell, having been in this role now for almost four years, there is a stark difference from when I started to now in my engagements on this. And that's also what our security officers on the front line who are negotiating at the checkpoints, what they feel. And so the sense of impunity is there and there needs to be clear accountability. We need to call them out and of course be consistent in how that is applied. On the new donors, I guess you were referring to mainly in the Middle East.
I mean, we are pushed and and forced to try to diversify our funding base. And I think it's clear that, you know, always with our donors there has been a level of of of interest, if you will, or national agendas that come with any contribution. But I think that that's becoming more pronounced and that relates also to the issue of of conditionality where it's more of a transactional approach to contributions rather than one that is driven by solidarity and to do the right thing and have the right impact. And that is a problem, but it goes beyond new donors, if you will.
And how to balance this, it's going to be, it's difficult, it's increasingly difficult. And we are, you know, faced with the dilemma of accepting resources that are necessary to save lives. You know, the women in South Sudan don't really care where that money comes from when their children are dying, but to do so under conditions that we feel are sufficiently safeguarding the humanitarian principles that we represent, so that we don't make short-term gains that, you know, do damage in the medium term to an extent that we won't be able to navigate going forward. I think those are the dilemmas that we on a daily basis are trying to weigh. I think on from the Greens, I think on it's clear that it is local resilience, food systems that are resilient to challenge and to shock at the local level is the key.
And that's what I spoke to in terms of what we need to do more as WFP as well. The strategic plan that we adopted back in November for the first time puts this really at the center, that this should be part of any effort already from the start. And so if I use Sudan as an example right now, I mean, we have different operations in Sudan itself. So in Khartoum, we are delivering, you know, in-kind food across fighting lines.
We dump it basically there, we distribute now in El Obeid to about 100,000 people and we get out. In Darfur, we are trying to move to cash because markets are beginning to return because there has been relative stability. And so we're trying to move to cash so that we get the markets back. There are some local activity in the economy, farmers can hopefully get back on their land somewhat and, you know, we then promote that. In the broader Khartoum area, where we've seen a lot of returns, for example, our main focus there is on school meals to get kids back into schools, but also to make sure then the kids get a nutritious meal a day, but also so that we stimulate the economy because we do the procurement for those school kitchens in the locally from local farmers and also recruit of course women from the communities into the kitchens.
So that is the kind of the concept, the next step. And then in the east, where you have areas that haven't been as impacted by the war at any stage so far, we are trying to promote development basically, you know, because there you need the irrigation systems fixed or serviced.
You know, that is the kind of of to get the production levels up so that there is more food available on the market so the prices come down in Khartoum and in Darfur so that when you distribute cash you get more for for that cash. So just to explain, so it's even in one context you can do different things, but the ultimate goal is of course to strengthen those local systems at the community and at the regional level in order for those systems to be resilience also to to future shock. On the fossil fuels I don't know if I have much to comment, but what I can say is that of course right now with the crisis in the Middle East what we've seen is that the increase of of of energy costs or fuel costs is having a dramatic impact on food security. So there is a relationship there. And it's of course about transport because much of the food is transported and so when costs for transport goes up then food prices go up and so if transport could be driven by other energy sources of course that would make, you know, that would mitigate that challenge.
But we also see it in irrigation. So if I come back to Sudan, you know, we are extremely worried, well I'm worried in so many levels about Sudan, but what we're now seeing is that Sudan got all its fertilizer from from the Gulf. It's now planting season because the rains are starting and there is no fertilizer whatsoever in the country. But on top of that, fuel has gone up 300% and and and the farming in in the Sudan is all based on water from the Nile and that's all irrigated from pumps that are driven by diesel.
And so, you know, the farmers when I was there last told me that they are not going to be able to run those pumps. And so, you know, our worry is that six months down the road now we are going to see a dramatic drop in the production because of fertilizer, because of the irrigation system. And if you on top of that now have an El Niño impact on agriculture on the Horn of Africa, you know, that is going to hit hard. And so I think you're at something there that I don't think WFP maybe has analyzed sufficiently, but that there is that link. And more broadly on climate change, I think it's like I said before, it's very clear.
You know, we've now seen two consecutive droughts in Somalia, which is then compounded by the fact that there isn't enough money and so we're heading towards another famine in Somalia. And that is, you know, climate change driven. The El Niño is clearly, if it is, you know, the most extreme El Niño in decades that we're seeing, I mean it clearly relates to climate change. And so I think that, you know, the link between food insecurity and climate change is quite clear there. And the questions related to conditionality in contributions, I think I spoke partly to that.
But it's across the board, you know, it's not only one new donor or old donor, it's a bit across the board.
It is a more transactional era and people are putting, or donors are putting more national narrow interests into their contributions. And as I said, as agencies, we have to now navigate that. It's not clear-cut. But certainly we need to know where we draw the line, and we do that. We are not accepting contributions, for example, in Sudan from governments that are being perceived or are contributing to the conflict because that would challenge our impartiality and neutrality.
So there are many examples of that, and we will continue to try to walk that line. But it's not an easy one, and it's becoming increasingly difficult. That brings me to the question about the US. I mean, I think it's important to first say that the US has not walked away completely. It's been a dramatic cut, but it's not walking away completely.
About a third last year from the US, about a third from the EU, the Commission and its member states. Part of that is in-kind, but only about a third of their contribution is in-kind.
And that's the absolute level of their in-kind contributions has remained the same over the past 10, 15 years. It's around $700 million per year. Of course, when the overall contribution has come down, the share has increased, but it's not a shift, if you will, in terms of their contributions when it comes to in-kind. The main challenge right now is the unpredictability. We don't know at all what will happen next year.
And you can imagine running an organization of 20,000 people, not to have, you know, visibility at all about the budget for next year in July is not easy. And so the unpredictability is the main issue. And I raised this with my US colleagues. Of course, they are well aware, but the unpredictability is a huge, a huge thing for us. As and the second is then like what you pointed to, that there are some countries that are off the list from US contributions.
They happen to be the ones that I also referred to as the most underfunded: Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen. And I think frankly, although I know that no donor would like to be gap-fillers, I think there is here a case for Europe to step in and to some degree try to compensate for that, because I think we need to expect that this is going to be the case for the next couple of years, and the humanitarian impact of not doing so will be massive.
So I think I'll leave it at that, and I hope I answered your questions.
Barry Andrews
Yeah, very comprehensively, thank you very much, Carl. And it's a good link in to hear now from Christoph Wagner, who is in charge of relations with the World Food Programme in DG ECHO. So maybe we'll give the floor to you, Christoph, for five minutes. Thank you.
Christoph Wagner
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Edie Skau. It's always a sober, sober experience to listen to, to, to these presentations. Let me just say, in terms of what you said in terms of the policy agenda for food security for the European Union, this is crucial. One third of the Commission's humanitarian budget goes into food security and nutrition, which is about 800 million euros per year. And WFP is our closest and most important operational partner.
Second, when it comes to the funding environment, what is important these days and what is so difficult are choices. Choices are unavoidable. And the question is how to make these choices, how to target those who are most food insecure and most at famine risks. And for this we need data. And as you, as you mentioned, Mr. Skau, this is crucial also because a lot of funding went down also for data.
So there is not enough funding there for IPC, which you are working on and with FAO together and the Global Network Against Food Crises. That's why we decided to provide particular funding now under our policy program for this particular action to support the generation of data, which is crucial. Thirdly, humanitarian action must become more effective. You mentioned that and we are very much supporting the humanitarian reset and UN80. WFP plays a key role in the integrated supply chain and in service provision and we really support that.
It's an uphill struggle sometimes. While a lot of things are happening in boardrooms and in headquarters, in the field it's much more difficult. And I realize that and we are also following this very closely, in particular in the five priority countries for the supply chain. It is important really to put into action what has been agreed. And for this you need all the partners and this is not always easy.
But you have our full support to move ahead and to bring results. And you mentioned humanitarian access and IHL.
Of course, this is a priority for us as well. In the communication, the joint communication, we had these three Ps: protect, perform, and partner. And we work closely with the EEAS and with the member states on this. We have to become better and we will work to to increase and to make our our actions more impactful on humanitarian diplomacy. And finally, indeed, humanitarian aid cannot support cannot solve these issues.
This needs to be done in a much more comprehensive way. And therefore fragility, addressing fragility is important, and we are working also with others in in the Commission and with member states to do so. One of the tools is anticipatory action. I know that you are also working on this now with FAO in the El Niño initiative, which we very much welcome, and we are eager to to work with you further. So thank you very much, Chair.
Barry Andrews
Okay, thank you, Christoph, and I think you've really highlighted this crucial point around joint services, supply chain, and data, and those kind of structural efficiencies that UN agencies are having to carry out, and World Food Programme is leading on this. I think that's really a very, very key takeaway for me for this morning.
Would you like to make any concluding remarks, having heard from DG ECHO? If not...
Carl Skau
Yeah, I mean, maybe I can just do one. I think that when you speak about better coordination, more effectiveness, I think what's important as well, and this is not by any means to put the ball back in the donor court, but I think it's important that donors, of course, provide the political and financial incentives for that collaboration, for that coordination, and certainly try to avoid fueling fragmentation and competition. I think maybe that's evident, but it's not always, you know, the case and as it's practiced. And finally, just on data, I mean, I think it's clear that, you know, if we don't have data, we are kind of acting in the blind and our response won't be as effective. And so funding cuts to that has been a challenge, and I thank the Commission for having supported us on that.
I think increasingly we also see a politicization around data. Countries are uncomfortable, governments are uncomfortable to tell the truth, and so we are seeing pushback in a different way than we have had in the past. And we need to, again, try to navigate that and then strike the balance between being the agency on the ground trying to do the work addressing the needs and also transparency telling the world about what the real situation is. And that is increasingly a difficult path to walk. And just finally to underline the importance of continued investments in fragile states.
I mean, the neighborhood to Europe, the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, needs those kinds of investments from the different instruments that the EU has to bring to bear.
And so I really hope that that will be the policy also going forward. Thank you.
Barry Andrews
Yes, 100% agree. Okay, thank you very much Carl on behalf of the members for your presence here this morning and also for your work around the world. We really appreciate it and I hope you and your staff remain safe. We will take a short break before resuming at midday. Thank you.
And Eric is here. Okay, let's get started with the, I think the last item on our agenda. Yeah, the last substantive point here. We'll get the bucket and spade ready very soon. All right.
So, we're going to have a conversation about Ukraine's healthcare system. We're very pleased to welcome Chris Stokes, who is the emergency coordinator for Ukraine at MSF, and Mr. Shahbaz Israr Khan, who's the MSF's operations coordinator for Ukraine.
We'll hear from both of them during the course of our meeting here today. And we also welcome Ms. Valeria Sorochian, who is director of the Department of Medical Services at the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, who will join us remotely. And we thank Valeria as well for joining us this morning, this afternoon. And finally, I also welcome colleagues from the European Commission, Hans Das, who is with us again, who's Deputy Director General, DG ECHO, and Ms. Marta Witkowska, who is Deputy Head of the Ukraine Division at the External Action Service, who will join us as part of the debate. And thank you all for being here today.
We also have a representative of DG ENER, who may wish to contribute during the course of this discussion. Right. So, before we hear from our main speakers, I would want to give the floor to Mr. Pekka Toveri, who's chair of the European Parliament's delegation. He's not there yet. He's not here.
He's on his way. He's on his way. So we'll come back to him in a short, shortly. So we've also invited members of the AFET Committee and the SANT Committee to this debate. So we'll hear from Mr. Toveri in a short while when he gets here.
So before giving the floor to Mr. Stokes, who's our main speaker from the MSF, I want to highlight to members that you have in your meeting file the MSF report, No Safe Place to Heal, published on Monday, which documents the systematic attacks on healthcare infrastructure and medical personnel in Ukraine and their devastating impact on civilian access to care. The report draws on evidence gathered by MSF teams between 2022 and 2025, and its findings are quite shocking, both in terms of the clearly strategic nature of the attacks and the profound impact on Ukraine's healthcare system. So with that, Chris, you're very welcome. I give you the floor for seven minutes. Thank you very much.
Chris Stokes
Okay. Is this on? Yeah. Okay, thanks for coming and thanks for the attention that you're paying to this presentation. Ukraine is often talked about and focused on in terms of politics or military developments, but the humanitarian story, what's happening in particular close to the front lines, is perhaps underreported.
And for Doctors Without Borders, Médecins Sans Frontières, we've been working along these front lines over a thousand kilometers long since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, providing medical care through ambulances, mobile clinics, supporting the hospitals. And we wanted to share with you the picture that's coming out of this evolution of the war there and the worsening situation for civilians.
But I would like to start just with a quote that illustrates some of the main captures, some of the main issues. We have a lot of interviews in our report and this is just one of them. On the 24th of December, I was wounded by artillery shelling by the Russian army from the bank of the river, the left bank. I was at the central market with my granddaughter. One shell fell just a few meters from me.
I saw many dead bodies, the lifeless bodies of people I knew, my neighbors lying injured on the asphalt, their skin burning. Our survival is a miracle. I was injured in the abdomen and hospitalized. I had to undergo surgery, but immediately after my operation, the hospital itself came under shelling. It was like a horror movie.
After this attack, the doctors told me that I could be transferred to a hospital in Mykolaiv. I agreed and was transferred by ambulance. My family is still in Kherson. This morning my daughter texted me to say that drones were flying over their house again. My children are scared and their children are scared.
This illustrates really the complex, multifaceted nature, both the attacks on healthcare, the difficulty to get treatment in a war zone such as this, and the targeting of civilians.
The overall humanitarian picture for Ukraine is very severe. Over 16,000 civilians killed and close to 50,000 injured, so 65,000 casualties. But these are only verified numbers. A lot of the deaths go unreported, so the numbers are significantly higher. And the civilian casualties keep on climbing up.
So each year is worse than the previous. 2025 was 30% higher than 2024, and itself roughly higher in terms of casualties than 2023. But behind these numbers, we really have to see how the war has changed close to the frontline and what's the impact on people. First, drones have changed the way civilians are being injured, and I'll explain a little bit after this. Secondly, healthcare is becoming increasingly difficult to access, not only because facilities are damaged or destroyed, but because people simply cannot move around safely.
And third, the report argues that many people are now dying not from the initial attack, but from subsequent lack of care for non-communicable diseases, chronic diseases. So, let's start with the attacks on healthcare.
We note a deliberate pattern of destruction of healthcare by Russian forces in Ukraine. Just looking at MSF's experience between April 2022 and December 25, we had more than 20 attacks affecting health facilities that we were directly supporting with our teams. Eight hospitals in which we've been working were evacuated. Of these hospitals, four were destroyed. I worked in some of these projects myself in Kostiantynivka, Pokrovsk, those hospitals no longer exist.
We run ambulance bases close to, in the east and the south, and we've had to close seven of these ambulance bases either because we had security threats or the area was just too dangerous. We have lost, two of our offices were damaged or destroyed, one by a Russian missile in Pokrovsk. MSF lost access to around 80 villages previously served by mobile clinics, so the access, the quality of care that you can provide to people is reducing as well. Another thing is double-tap attacks. So these are familiar to anyone who worked in Syria before.
It's where a first attack takes place and a second one is launched to kill the rescuers. And this is something that we've noticed increasing at least since 2023. And as we run ambulance services, it has a big impact on us.
We often have to wait 35, 40, 45 minutes before attending the site of, of an attack. We're now working in hospitals with reinforced concrete walls. This has become the new normal for us. We put blast-proof film on the windows. We reduce our movements.
We often live in the hospitals for two weeks at a time, not even leaving the building to smoke a cigarette, which a lot of doctors, as you know, will tend to do. So they tend to remain completely bunkered in these environments. So basically there's no stability or security for healthcare workers, neither for their, neither for the hospitals nor the ambulances. And this is not an accident. The attacks are too frequent.
The pattern keeps repeating. It's clear that Russian forces, as they're operating in the areas in which we're working today, afford no protection to hospitals, ambulances, or healthcare workers. Another development I want to touch on that we detail in the report is the rise of drone warfare. So there's been a fundamental shift. Before we were treating victims of artillery, now we're treating victims of drone attacks.
They, because they're more targeted and pinpoint and tend to land on the victim or very close by, they create more complex traumas. We've noticed a very significant increase. Multiple fractures in our early rehabilitation program have increased by 51%. Multiple amputations have tripled. We have a lot of finger and hand amputations that have increased sharply because people tend to protect themselves from drones just before they come in.
And these are the majority of our trauma cases.
This has a big impact on the lives they're going to lead afterwards. And as one of our surgeons explains in the report, the first battle is against the bleeding when one of these victims come in, the second one is against infection because the drones create multiple entry points into the body, creating multiple infections, risk of infections. So we often lose patients after they've been saved on the operating table, we lose them further down the road. Next to this, because of the increased insecurity and the general fatigue, we've noted a significant decrease in the number of medical staff working in areas closer to the frontline. We're talking about the first 50, 60, 80 kilometers behind it.
So Kherson hospital where we work, we have 60% fewer doctors, Ukrainian doctors, 50% fewer nurses, even though the number of severe cases has actually increased and there would be need for significantly more. So they are definitely at this point leaving the front line. And as one of our clinical officers explained, everyone is afraid. Our eyes may be afraid, but our hands keep working. Who if not us?
And I have to say also a big thank you to our Ukrainian colleagues, the 400 Ukrainian colleagues working in our ambulance and medical projects in Ukraine who are really carrying this forward. A last point that's a salient point that's become increasingly visible in this crisis is the, let's call it the silent crisis where chronic becomes critical. So what we've noticed and we did interviews of patients that we see in our clinics is that before the full-scale invasion, we asked them what kind of access did you have to healthcare? So we're talking about people in Kherson, in Dnipro oblast, Donetsk oblast, etc. and the north. 72%, so three quarters said they could usually access healthcare whenever they needed it.
By 2025, that figure had fallen to 35%. At the same time, we asked people what was the proportion of you who could rarely or never obtain access to healthcare, so didn't see a doctor basically before the full-scale invasion. The number was quite low, 7%. Now it's jumped to 35%.
So this is one of the clearest illustrations in the report of how the war is affecting people in these areas. So people with let's say routine chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, etc., don't seek care, are not able to, it's too dangerous and they barely move. So we've launched a program of remote consultations, but clearly this is not sufficient and doesn't complete and we still have the problem of providing medical attention to these people. This is underreported in terms of casualties and deaths in Ukraine. So the numbers I gave you in the beginning are generally widely available statistics, but the number of people who die early death because their chronic conditions are untreated across the frontline is not sufficiently reported and hasn't really been studied effectively.
So the report presents a bleak picture and the central message for us is really about protecting not only the hospitals, but the ambulances, the operating theaters, the rehabilitation, the long-term chronic disease care. There really is today no safe place to heal in Ukraine.
Perhaps one small point as well to point out that although Russia is largely responsible for these destructions in the areas in which we operate, we've noticed an increase in attacks on healthcare, be it in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Sudan. Ten years after the UN resolution 2286, clearly this resolution designed to protect healthcare is not being enforced, and we really call on the end of the normalization of attacks on healthcare and hospitals, be it in Ukraine, but also in other humanitarian crises around the world. Thank you.
Barry Andrews
Okay, thank you, Chris. And now we go to Hans Das, who's here on the podium, Deputy Director-General of DG ECHO. Hans, you have the floor for five minutes.
Hans Das
Thank you so much. Good morning to all of you, and thank you very much for making time available in your agenda for this very important report. And I would like to start by thanking MSF for documenting and reporting on all of these challenges. We very much share your analysis. We agree on the problems that you have identified, and we also agree on the need to step up advocacy and to speak out more on these issues.
A couple of general remarks from my side, and then I'll focus on the EU response to these issues. First of all, Ukraine's humanitarian situation obviously remains dire.
Hostilities have recently intensified, killing and injuring civilians, targeting homes, schools, transport networks, critical energy infrastructure, and indeed healthcare facilities. Since the start of 2024, casualties among aid workers in Ukraine have nearly doubled. I'm mentioning all of this just to say that these are all clear violations of international humanitarian law and they must stop. We need to continue to publicly condemn these attacks and collectively call on Russia to allow for, to cease these violations of international humanitarian law and to allow for better humanitarian access, especially in frontline areas. Moving to the EU's response, the EU's commitment to humanitarian aid in Ukraine is unwavering.
Since February 2022, we have provided over 1.5 billion in humanitarian aid. This year alone, we are providing 220 million. And health is a very important priority within that response for obvious reasons. While remarkably resilient, Ukraine's health system continues to face immense strain. In 2024, more than 4 million people require urgent health assistance, making healthcare one of the absolute top humanitarian priorities in Ukraine.
Attacks on healthcare in Ukraine remain widespread and severe, as the report shows. Since February 2022, Ukraine has accounted for around 45% of all attacks on healthcare reported globally. More than 2,540 health facilities have been confirmed as affected by attacks, with over 230 deaths and 1,000 injuries among health workers and patients. These are figures that need to be taken very seriously. And just to add, it is very severe in Ukraine, but I've just come back from Palestine and we see a very similar pattern there, with also many attacks on health facilities.
We see the same in Lebanon. We see the same in South Sudan. So it is a horizontal issue that perhaps after the summer we need to come back to and try to see whether Europe can step up on the advocacy side. So we're doing a lot of response work on health. We are funding five critical programs to restore and strengthen access to primary healthcare in Ukraine's frontline areas.
This includes prefab medical units, as well as water purification and heating systems to help ensure continuity of care after attacks or power failures.
ECHO-funded partners are also delivering emergency life-saving healthcare and medical evacuations, including in areas within 20 kilometers from the frontline. They're also providing mental health support, trauma care, reproductive health, and physical rehabilitation. Ukraine is a crisis where we are responding with our humanitarian aid funding, but also with our civil protection mechanism, where our member states are in a coordinated way providing massive in-kind assistance. And in the health area, substantial support has been mobilized based on the priorities identified by Ukraine's Ministry of Health. This has included, for instance, more than 200 ambulances, over 1.4 million units of therapeutics, essential medical equipment, and protective gear.
And we have also generously made available our own EU strategic stockpiles, in particular the rescEU medical and CBRN strategic stockpiles. Just a final word on the medical evacuation program that we are running for Ukraine. Since March 2022, we have supported medical evacuations of Ukrainian patients to European hospitals.
So far, over 5,200 patients have been evacuated under the UCPM to 22 European countries to receive specialized treatment, providing much-needed relief to Ukraine's healthcare system. That Medevac operation is a European success story. It is a real burden-sharing effort by all of our Member States, or at least 22 of our Member States and the European Commission, and it is a concrete expression and model of European solidarity in a very, very difficult situation. And I'll leave it at that. Thank you.
Barry Andrews
Thank you, Hans, for that outline. So, we are joined remotely by Ms. Valeriia Saruchan, who is Director of the Department of Medical Services at the Ministry of Health of Ukraine. And we see you there, Valeriia. You're very, very welcome. I hope you can hear us and see us.
If you can, you have the floor for five minutes. Apologies, Valeriia, we can see you and your presentation, but we can't hear you at this point. So maybe we will ask you to reconnect unless some intervention can happen.
Speaker 19
Yes, Valeriia, we can hear you and see you. You have five minutes.
Thank you very much.
Valeriia Saruchan
Well, thank you so much, dear chair, dear committee. First of all, I would like to say thank you for the very true to presentations that we have heard just now. We would also like to thank the EU for the commitment and the humanitarian aid and the funds, and also for drawing such public attention to what is going on in the healthcare system. We also presented a little, just a very short brief, can we do the next slide, please? Very brief presentation for the committee to have an understanding of how the system functions and what measures have been taken also by the government across the country to provide medical services.
Can we do the next slide, please? At this point, we have the emergency medical teams that are equipped with specialized gear and they function 24/7, no matter what attacks, what drones are flying, what rockets are flying.
Here on the presentation, you can see how they're functioning at basically a couple, just a couple of minutes right after the attack. 10 to 15% of such medical teams, they can be drawn and called from each region to help with mass casualty events. Next slide, please. And just about a month ago, we have a national emergency medical team that was verified by the WHO. Next slide.
With the support of international partners and of course on behalf of the Ministry of Health, we constantly conduct trainings for CBRN and just in June of this year, we had a training in the city of Vinnytsia, Lviv region. Next slide. We at this point have set up a network of 180 hospitals prepared for mass casualty events. These hospitals have a reserve of medicines and medical supplies. They have clear emergency response plans.
27 of these hospitals have decontamination tents and on a year-round basis we try to monitor them to see their preparedness and readiness. Next slide. Evacuation was addressed with the Medevac program. Once again, many thanks from the Ukrainian side for the help. There was a number said that more than 5,000 patients were evacuated abroad.
I'm going to correct a little bit and say that it's more than 6,000 patients at this point that have been evacuated abroad, which we are very grateful for the support and for the help. Here on the presentation you can see from the Norwegian side we had a bus donated to us which helps us a lot when we evacuate patients. We can at the same time we can evacuate three patients, heavy patients, because the bus also contains two intensive care units. In the middle picture what we wanted to address is that we set up a system which is called targeted evacuation.
This was put up for the armed forces of Ukraine, but then we expanded the program and now at this point with this targeted evacuation what it means is that we directly take the soldiers from the battlefield and we targetedly evacuate them to a certain hospital that fulfills their needs. This program was it began for the armed forces, but now we've expanded it for the civilians also and especially for the burn patients and we've evacuated about 81 we've done about 81 successful evacuations so again very thank you to a lot a lot of thanks to all the partners. Next slide please. When we speak about access because access is one of the main things that we need to provide to the whole nation, we have put up mobile pharmacies in the remote and the rural areas. At this point we have about on the left hand side you can see the presentation you can see our minister Viktor Liashko monitoring actually how the mobile pharmacies work.
At this point we have 35 mobile pharmacies across 19 regions of Ukraine. On the right hand side you can see the recovery facilities that are set up in more than 500 hospitals.
This is across the region. At this point, we've performed about 16,000, at this point, 16,000 sessions per day are performed. And about, they're provided by 11,000 specialists. Next slide, please. Also, one of the main focuses is for the mental healthcare.
At this point, we've set up about 195 mental health centers across the region where patients can receive mental healthcare. Also, we've integrated it into the primary healthcare, meaning that all of our primary care physicians, they have undergone a training program where they can at an early age detect a mental health issue and then refer the patient to a more specialized level. Next slide.
A little bit about the infrastructure. As of today, more than 800 health care facilities have been damaged and the World Bank estimated the recovery at about 24 billion US dollars in the next 10 years. At the beginning of the war, we have set up a capable network of hospitals which consists of about 632 key hospitals. They provide a full-scale medical care in each region. At this point, with the support and with the help of the international partners, 70% of them are fully autonomous, meaning they have their own power source, they have their own water and heating supply.
At this point, 100% of those hospitals in the capable network have generators. Next slide, please. 90% of these hospitals have autonomous heating and on the slides you can see presented a setup of the solid fuel boilers. Next slide. 74% have autonomous water supply and here you see a setup of a well and an autonomous water supply.
Next slide. At this point, 51% of the hospitals in the capable network are equipped with shelters that meet the need, that meet the government building standards.
Of course, there's a lot more work to be done because the other 49% also need to be adjusted, and this was all done during the war. Next slide. We're also taking measures to set up underground hospitals. One of this, one of these hospitals on the left-hand side you see, it is in the city Kryvyi Rih, and on the right-hand side, this is a hospital in Kherson. So such underground hospitals, as you can see on the pictures presented, they have, they're equipped with mobile beds, they have ICU, they also have specialized diagnostic equipment and also operation rooms to perform surgery.
So, dear colleagues, all in all, these actions are part of an ongoing effort that has been started at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Many results are possible with the support and the help, constant help of our international partners, and we are very grateful for such support.
We are always open to cooperation and ready to give our experience. So at the end of the day live and learn and once again a lot of thanks for the publicity that the European Union is gathering to see what crisis is going on in Ukraine. Thank you.
Barry Andrews
Okay, brilliant. Thank you Valeria, that's an incredible story of resilience and perseverance. So thank you. We are now joined by Mr. Pekka Toveri, who is the chair of the European Parliament's delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Association Committee. So Pekka, you're very welcome and I'll give you the floor for two minutes, please.
Thank you.
Pekka Toveri
Thank you very much, sorry for being late. I was in a camera meeting about the Russian hybrid activities against Baltic states and lost the time of sense, sense of time, sorry. But here we are. We are grateful for your committee's continued interest and engagement in the topic of Ukraine. As we all know Russia's attack, especially mass aerial drone attacks and ballistic missiles also target hospitals, ambulances, first responders and aid workers.
As of May 2026, the World Health Organization has verified more than 3,000 attacks on healthcare since 2022 through the surveillance system for attack on healthcare. From primary healthcare centers to maternity hospitals, from ambulance teams to pharmaceutical warehouses, every component of the system has been affected. Many of us have seen burnt-out ambulance vehicles on display here in Brussels or during our visits to Ukraine. One of the most notorious attacks happened two years ago in July on the Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital in central Kyiv. It was visited by our colleagues from the European Parliament's Committee on Public Health.
Healthcare facilities have been severely impacted. Around 80% of verified attacks on healthcare have been affected clinics, hospitals, and other places of care. Beyond the immediate casualties, such attacks disrupt service delivery, damage critical infrastructure, and erode the health system's capacity over time.
Therefore, there are also very important secondary impacts. The situation can be particularly difficult in the areas close to the front line. We just yesterday had a discussion here in Parliament and representatives from Kherson told about how they have been over four years under fire when Russians are shooting on the civilian installations across the Dnipro river and hunt down single civilian people with FPV drones, which have forced them to start building up a hospital, for example, underground, as we heard. This committee's competencies also include the international humanitarian law, which is totally disrespected by the Russian Federation. And this is again something that we have a long history.
We Finns learned from Second World War not to mark any military healthcare facilities with Red Cross as international law required because Russians targeted them and we don't do it now either and neither does Ukraine. And that tells that if we never punish Russia for its actions, they will continue. And these cynical attacks are also dismantling the rules-based order. This is why they are also an attack on our shared values. Therefore, it's crucial that we look at the wider implications and again find ways to punish Russia for these breaks of international laws.
Thank you for organizing today's discussion to hear directly from those who have been experienced from these Russian actions on the ground.
And while we listen to the challenges, we should also think of the solutions and how we can help Ukraine on its existential fight. Thank you.
Barry Andrews
Okay, thank you very much, Pekka, for that insight, in particular the experience of Finland in sharing a border with Russia. So let's now turn to the members. So we'll start with Udo, if you wish, for S&D.
Udo Bullmann
Thanks, Chair, and thanks Médecins Sans Frontières for keeping up this issue and giving us this insightful report. I think, yes, it is indeed of utmost importance to keep us informed and to share your complicated experiences. And we only can underscore the admiration for the colleagues working in the frontline and supporting the people in the Ukraine on that.
We have, and I know a bit because I was in the last mandate the chair for the humanitarian subcommittee, human rights, and we went to the Ukraine as the first committee going to the formerly occupied territory, so we have a bit of experience on that. This committee, the development committee, and Hans knows that and the others know that, our guests and colleagues, has to work against its own speechlessness. Because we are permanently dealing with issues. World Food Programme was on the agenda today, the big conflicts in the Horn of Africa and Afghanistan and elsewhere are on the agenda. And we are in a ritual.
We are permanently describing the growing crisis. We listen to reports what our institution, and we need to have these reports, don't, this is no criticism. So we listen to the reports of how much money we invest from the European Commission side, from the External Action Service, from our member states, etc. And we know exactly it's not enough. Because the need is quicker growing than the support.
And this is a psychological dilemma also for this committee and for the people in the, so we have to work against our own fatigue, the threat of the fatigue, because that produces speechlessness.
And let me ask the following question to our guests. We have a full debate in the bubble, in the newspapers, in the online media on the weapon supply. And we know about the cleavages here and do we send the right missiles, do we send them early enough, do we send enough of them or not. We have a full debate on the next step of integration within the European institutions, rightly so, both of that. But what is the picture, and it's also a question to DG ECHO, what is the picture of European solidarity of the Team Europe balance sheet at the very end of the day?
Is there full solidarity of our member states? Because you are referring to overall numbers, we do not exactly know the share of our member states' participation. Give us a picture because if we would like to mobilize the things that can be mobilized, we need to have a clear picture on who is in the frontline sharing solidarity and who can perhaps mobilize more.
Erik Marquardt
Yes. First, I thank you all for your work and all the information. I think many questions I have are already answered with the input you made. I wanted to say one first point. I know that nobody's forgetting it, but I think the best humanitarian aid Ukraine can receive is if Russia just ends the war.
It could end in a few seconds if just Vladimir Putin says it's over, we go home, no problem anymore. And that's I think also like from a political point of view of course the first aim where we have to have discussions on how to increase the pressure on Russia to yeah, not make it worse to fuel this war further. Secondly, I think a general question I have is like what can we do as parliamentarians in the European Parliament? Like is there something, of course we need more money, we need more attention and all these things, but is there something specific we could do?
And then I have two specific questions on reports on booby traps and stuff. Is that a thing? How to deal with situations where Russia booby traps things? Is this a thing also for the humanitarian aid? And then a second point, we had a resolution on humanitarian aid last week.
I think many good points in it. One point is to criticize double taps. And is double tap also a problem in Ukraine and how you deal with it?
Barry Andrews
Okay, and just one question from myself before we go to External Action Service and maybe Enest and Shabaz may wish to intervene. But just from my own point of view for MSF, we heard from the World Food Programme just a moment ago that the killing zone, this is a terrible phrase, is increased from 15 kilometres to 50 kilometres. You also say that you've lost access to 80 villages that you previously accessed with mobile clinics. Now, I know that MSF would have one of the highest risk appetites and capability and inclination to go into the most difficult humanitarian zones.
So maybe you could just elaborate the loss of access and relate it, if you can, to the nature of the drone warfare and how it's impacted the killing zone. And second different point, MSF is always more outspoken because your donor base is very different, you don't rely on institutional funding. Have you noticed a change in the advocacy atmosphere as other actors are less outspoken because of the restrictions on their funding, earmarking, the transactional nature of humanitarian funding these days that we heard about from World Food Programme? So there my questions. Before we go to our three main guests, I want to just introduce the External Action Service who are present.
Ms. Marta Wytrykowska is Deputy Head of the Ukraine Division at the EEAS for some brief comments. Marta, you're welcome, you have the floor for two minutes, please.
Marta Wytrykowska
Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you for organizing this important debate and drawing our attention to the plight of civilians and the situation in the public healthcare, and thank you for the opportunity to speak. On our side, I would like to say that many of the atrocities described today in the presentations and experienced by Ukrainians are the result of war crimes. These intentional attacks against civilians are classified as war crimes under the humanitarian law. Unfortunately, we have witnessed violence against civilians since the very beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion, and this violence is increasing systematically, as we heard today. Unfortunately, Russia's attacks against employees of humanitarian organizations are also becoming more frequent.
As we heard today in the presentations, Russia's war of aggression is having devastating effects on Ukraine's public health system and is also placing a heavy burden on the public health systems in the years to come. Attacks on hospitals, clinics, ambulances, energy infrastructure, they have disrupted access to essential healthcare, while at the same time the needs of the population have risen dramatically. So on our side from the European External Action Service, what we do and what we will continue to do is we will continue calling on Russia to uphold international humanitarian law and we continue to condemn any deliberate attacks on healthcare facilities, medical convoys or humanitarian workers. We will continue supporting Ukraine and continue putting pressure on Russia. We will continue working on accountability mechanisms to bring those responsible for the attacks, for the war crimes to account.
We will continue global outreach to third countries and continue strategic communication campaigns and we will also continue preparation for the winter. Thank you very much.
Barry Andrews
Thank you very much, Marta. We are also joined by DG ENER, so please you have the floor for two minutes. You're welcome.
Fernando Fonseca
Thank you chair for giving me the floor. My name is Fernando Fonseca from DG NEAR Ukraine service. I will be short highlighting the main our main support under the Ukraine facility to healthcare. So we all know that we have three different pillars of support in under the Ukraine facility. And under pillar one we are mainly working on supporting investments in the healthcare in Ukraine.
And Ukraine can use 400 million euros until the end of 2027. So for the four years of the Ukraine facility 2024 to 2027 for these investments. I give you a few examples. Ukraine can use this money for shelters in the healthcare facilities, hospital equipment, but also to repair damaged healthcare facilities and infrastructure. Under the pillar two of the Ukraine facility we call it the Ukraine investment framework.
The commission is working with European and international financial institutions. And here we have currently two main programs. One with the Czech national promotional bank and the Czech development agency which is basically aimed at renovating and modernizing hospitals.
And the second one with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, where we are strengthening emergency and primary healthcare across Ukraine. Finally, the third pillar of the Ukraine facility is managed by the EU delegation in Ukraine and its capacity building and technical assistance projects. Here I would mention our two main projects which are being implemented by the World Health Organization. One is on mental and physical rehabilitation, and the other one has recently started and it's to continue, I say continue because WHO was already for years helping Ukraine on this, with our funding but also without our funding. It's basically to continue giving capacity building to the Ministry of Health to make the necessary reforms.
And now with the accession process ongoing, it's very important to help Ukraine to align with the extensive and complex EU acquis under the chapter of the acquis on public health. And I would stop here. Thank you.
Barry Andrews
Thank you very much, Mr. Fonseca, for that. And now I will give the floor to Shahbaz Israr Khan, who is MSF's operations coordinator for Ukraine. Shahbaz, you're welcome. You have two minutes, please.
Shahbaz Israr Khan
Thank you. Thank you so much. First of all, to emphasize, as you also mentioned, that MSF is an independent, impartial, and neutral organization and our funding is, we are not dependent on institutional donors. 97% of our funding is from individual donors that gives us this leverage of being financially independent. With this, I would like to emphasize when medical facilities are being attacked, and as we witnessed that out of eight facilities that we left, four were destroyed.
81 villages that remain without access. Medical workers that are then clearly are attacked in clearly marked emblems that should have been protected under IHL. And all the human testimonies and sufferings this report covers. It all indicates, and all the testimonies are quite strong and they indicate that these attacks are not incidental.
These attacks are not erratic. It is deliberate, and it is a strategy. Based on that, we call upon for the protection of healthcare, as to condemn attacks on civilian, civilian infrastructures, humanitarian workers, healthcare workers, and facilities. Press for respect and implementation of international humanitarian law and UNHCR 2286. Promotion of independent, impartial, and systematic investigation into attacks.
Support emergency care along the frontline, which is under quite pressure, as we also witness in terms of the mobile clinics near to the frontline or to the different healthcare services specifically near to the frontline. Mental health services, rehabilitation, and continuity of treatment. Finally, do not normalize attacks against the healthcare and healthcare workers. 2286 must be fully respected and implemented. Normalization of attacks on healthcare must stop, either it is Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, or any other country.
It must not happen. Thank you.
Barry Andrews
Thank you, Shahbaz, for that. So let's go back to our main speakers for their response to the specific questions and any concluding remarks. So Chris, I'll go to you for two minutes, if you can please.
Chris Stokes
So yeah, in your own question regarding the what we call this gray zone. So it's true that you're looking at a 1,000 kilometer frontline with not much movement. However, the movement is in depth. So the drones are reaching further and further into the areas where we're trying to help our patients. And it means that, for example, a hospital in Izyum, Dnipro, Shakhtarske hospital, I was there earlier this year, each trip to the hospital is a calculated risk because there was attacks on the road and it's 40 kilometers from the frontline, so you'd think it's reasonably safe, but that's far from the case.
We had a, we mention in the report a family, the father was killed and the sons drove back and and yeah multiple injuries etc on the survivors of that attack. So this the combination of weapons that have longer reach, deeper, and then the disregard for a white vehicle with a with a red cross on the roof is really problematic. It was mentioned with regard from our Finnish guest but this is something that we're seeing quite regularly there. You raise as well the issue of of the vocal how vocal organizations are. So it's true that Médecins Sans Frontières chose to have private funding independent funding from states.
I think one of the funding isn't the only issue if to expand it out a little bit what we've seen for example MSF is no has been deregistered in in Israel for example so we're not really able to work effectively in Gaza. And there is a tendency by governments to select the aid organizations that they consider to be let's say less vocal for example. So as international journalists are not allowed into Gaza neither are neither are a lot of the independent aid organizations and indeed we had even the creation of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation which was like a private company to replace. So those are tendencies, trends let's say that are worrying and clearly for European Union should defend it's one of the great achievements somehow the the international humanitarian law, independent aid actors able to cross front lines etc.
This is core business for the European Union and it should be for all governments, be it in Ukraine and in Gaza and elsewhere.
Barry Andrews
Thank you Chris for that answer. Hans, specific question directed to you, you have two minutes.
Hans Das
Thank you so much. I'll actually touch upon two questions that were raised and perhaps I'll start with the question on what more can we do, sort of as European Parliament and European institutions. I think my view of this is fairly clear. Attacks against healthcare facilities are not acceptable. They are illegal under international humanitarian law and they cannot be accepted in any possible way.
So we need to expose these attacks, we need to expose those responsible for it. We need to speak up and we need to increase the pressure and we need to hold those responsible accountable for it. And on that I just wanted to mention also that our colleagues from the FPI are also funding programs to support the investigation and the prosecution of international crimes in Ukraine. So there's really a very sort of broad use of all of the available instruments.
And I think on the advocacy, the speaking up, the European Parliament can really help, and it is very important that we're having this debate here. Secondly, what more can we do? We need to sustain the effort. We need to respond to the needs that we have on the ground. It's now the fifth year into this war.
We need to continue to mobilize the funding necessary for all of this, and we're trying to do our part on the European Commission side, but it's important that all member states do the same thing. Coming to this very specific question about the solidarity picture and who is doing what, here I can reassure you that the response to the crisis in Ukraine is a real burden-sharing effort. If you look at the in-kind donations from member states through the Union Civil Protection Mechanism, it is the largest and the most generous operation we have ever conducted, with really all 27 member states and some of our participating countries providing aid to Ukraine. There are of course frontrunners, there are member states that do more than others, the Scandinavian, the Baltic countries, the Nordic countries in general, Germany in particular also has done enormous efforts.
But everybody's contributing and that is really fantastic. Specifically on the medical evacuation, we have 22 member states contributing, again with Germany taking the largest part of the patients, 1,200 patients of the more than 5,000 patients have gone to German hospitals. But also a country as Lithuania has done a lot. I stop there. Thank you.
Barry Andrews
Thank you Hans, I'm sorry we have very limited time. So let us see can we just give a final word and brief word to Valeria if she is still with us, can see us and hear us. Hello Valeria, I can see you. You have two minutes to make some concluding remarks if there's anything you want to respond to. I'm sorry we have very, very little time.
Thank you.
Hello?
We can hear you, thank you.
Valeriia Saruchan
Perfect. With the response of all of the from all of the presenters, I would just like to say once again on behalf of the Ministry of Health and on behalf of Ukraine as a citizen, we would like to say thank you for the support, thank you for the contribution that the EU is doing at this point.
Thank you to all the organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and No Safe Place to Heal for the help, for the input. Once again, as the presenters have said, there are ongoing struggles, there are ongoing problems at the frontline areas, and there's effort put to provide medical services at such frontlines. Effort is an ongoing, it's a constant situation that we face. But on the other hand, I also want to point out that with the help of the partners and with the help of the other countries, we are able to evacuate patients and provide them with treatment that they need that we can't provide at this point in our country. Also, the resilience that Ukraine has built during the five years of the full-scale war has been only possible with the help of the European Union.
So we look forward to the support that can be given in the future. We look forward to any cooperation and we are always pleased to share experience if it is needed. So just to reflect on the presentations that were given, we would just like to say thank you.
Barry Andrews
Well, I think the gratitude is very, very much reciprocated for the sacrifices that you're making.
So the final word will go to Pekka Toveri. You have one minute, please.
Pekka Toveri
Thank you, thank you, thank you, colleagues. Yesterday we opened access in cluster six for Ukraine and Ukraine's future is in EU. We all know that and that's the message we have to convey to Putin. He has already lost. Ukraine will become member of EU and Europe.
Well, that probably don't stop Putin. He will try to continue to try to break Ukrainians' willingness to fight by killing civilians and destroying the infra- infrastructure because he can't win the Ukrainian army. So in order to be make it able to make it possible for Ukraine to fight, the healthcare resilience and social resilience go hand in hand. We are in this together and this will remain a long-term effort and engagement for EU. In some areas cooperation is already exemplary and we can even learn from Ukraine's progress and innovative approaches.
For Ukraine's recovery we will have to apply the principle of build back better. And when in the future the war will end, we have to change the way we support.
We have to help to build up the infrastructure but we also have to help in rehabilitation of injured veterans and civilians and psychosocial support for millions of traumatized Ukrainians. And our Parliament is fully behind supporting Ukraine and the healthcare sector will remain a priority for both immediate humanitarian needs and also the longer run in EU's progress. Thank you.
Barry Andrews
Okay, well thank you very much everybody. I just want to thank the members and their teams and the secretariat, Jesper and his team. I hope you all have a great summer. Thank the interpreters for your patience with us. And look, I hope you and the external institutions for their attendance at our committees over the full year.
Thank you very much. And we wish you all a very good summer, come back in September for very important work that faces us. So thank you all very much.
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