Image left to right: Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, Prof. Karl-Heinz Paqué

Liberal International Deputy President and Chairman of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (LI cooperating organisation), Prof. Karl-Heinz Paqué, has endorsed a call by Deputy Chair of the FDP (LI fill member) Parliamentary Group in the German Bundestag responsible for foreign security, European, and development policy, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, for a greater commitment from Germany and Europe to the World Health Organisation (WHO), after the halt of payments by the United States.

After the halt of US payments to the WHO, the Free Democrats (FDP) in the German Bundestag are calling for a greater commitment from Germany and Europe. “Germany, together with its European partners, should step in financially to bridge this funding gap,” said Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, Deputy Chairman of the FDP Group, to the German Press Agency in Berlin on Wednesday.

“In such a crisis, the WHO needs all the resources it can get in order to remain capable of action. Especially in the poorest countries of the world, the peak of the pandemic is yet to come. And in these countries the WHO is often the only source of help on the ground,” he said.

US President Donald Trump had previously directed a halt to U.S. payments to the World Health Organization.

First of all, Lambsdorff said, it should be examined what role the WHO played in the “poor handling and cover-up of the spread of the coronavirus”. Lambsdorff called it “irresponsible of the US to cut off the WHO’s funding in the middle of a pandemic”.

Secondly, the FDP politician stressed that after the corona pandemic, WHO members like Germany must demand an “honest crisis performance report”. Taking information and data from China without critically checking it, must not be repeated. “The German government must increase its efforts to make the WHO stronger, more professional and more independent. To do this, the organization needs more rights vis-à-vis the individual member states.” These should have to oblige under international law to report early and honestly on disease outbreaks, “something that China has clearly not done,” Lambsdorff said.”