European leaders are preparing for a decisive vote in the Budget Committee of the European Parliament on April 15. It will set the Parliament’s position on the financial parameters the EU has at its disposal, to implement its goals and vision for the next seven years. In a time of geopolitical tensions, it’s more important than ever that the EU has a clear strategic vision for the future, especially when it comes to external relations.
Human development is perhaps the closest thing we have to a guaranteed return on investment. When people are healthy, they build businesses, trade and sustain communities. Over the past three decades, investment in health systems, education and economic opportunity has helped more than 1.5 billion people escape extreme povertyi, one of the most significant improvements in human wellbeing in modern history. Yet this progress remains fragile.
In many low-income countries, most of them in Sub-Saharan Africa, essential healthcare services remain inaccessible to large parts of the population. These figures may seem abstract, but they mark the difference between societies that grow and societies trapped in instability.
Why I cannot look at a budget line and see only numbers
Consider HIV. Thirty years ago, a positive diagnosis was effectively a death sentence. Today, with consistent access to antiretroviral therapy, people living with HIV can live long, healthy lives and with an undetectable viral load, cannot transmit the virus. This transformation, built on decades of global health investment, is one of the clearest demonstrations of what sustained investment in human development can achieve.
I saw this firsthand while working as a volunteer on HIV awareness in rural communities of South India. When treatment programmes were funded reliably, people living with HIV could stay healthy, continue working, support their families, and contribute to their communities. The people whose lives were transformed by treatment programmes were not mere statistics, but parents raising families, children who got to have a childhood, teachers returning to classrooms and workers rebuilding their livelihoods.
But progress only holds as long as the funding does. Sub-Saharan Africa still accounts for nearly two-thirds of people living with HIV globally and nearly nine out of ten children living with HIVii. All of them now have a chance at life because scientific advancement has transformed what is possible in prevention and treatment, including innovations such as Lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injectable that has shown near-complete protection against HIV. At scale, this costs as little as €20 per person per yeariii, which is less than the cost of a working lunch in Brussels.
Breakthroughs like this, however, depend on sustained funding for global health initiativesiv such as Gavi and The Global Fund through the EU’s long-term budget. These programmes rely on predictable European funding, and without it, decades of progress could stall irreversibly, driving up future global healthcare costs.
What Europe decides on April 15th, and why it matters beyond its borders
For Europe, investing in human development abroad is not an act of charity but strategic foresight. A healthier, better educated and more economically secure world benefits not only the countries receiving the support, but also Europe itself.
First, health security is shared security. Infectious diseases do not respect borders, and pandemics do not need passports. A funding gap that allows a health system to collapse in Nairobi or Kinshasa is not a distant humanitarian problem; it is a future European health risk. Investing in health systems abroad is a form of domestic protection.
Second, human development builds economic partners. A healthy, educated population is a productive one. By 2050, one in four people in the world will live in Africav, making the continent one of the defining economic centres of the century. European investment in human development today helps build the trading partners, consumer markets and economic relationships of the future.
Third, geopolitical soft power follows investment. Where Europe retreats, others step in. China, Russia and Gulf states are all deepening their presence across the African continent. The EU’s external budget is one of its most important tools of global influence. Providing more than 40% of all official development assistance (ODA) in the worldvi EU has the capacity to shape global human development outcomes. That is why investing in Africa is central to positioning the EU as a stable and influential global actor.
The question now facing Europe is not whether it can afford to invest in human development globally. The question is whether it can afford not to.
Written by Udita Sawhney – ONE Youth Ambassador
References
[i] https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2025/goal-01
[ii] https://data.unicef.org/topic/hivaids/global-regional-trends
[iii] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5293409
[iv] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)02421-3/fulltext
