Tobacco Control in Africa - TCA

The answer from the European Commission about our request for information: the announced contract is not yet signed

I received yesterday an email from Mr Thomas Kirchner (see below the content). He explains that "this contract does not yet exist. It is currently under preparation and foreseen to be signed before the end of this year." Therefore there are no documents available. I remain interested in a detailed breakdown of the budget as what was provided raised a certain number of questions that have not been answered. As for an eventual commitment to detailed communication and transparency, the eventual requirements seem limited but one should wait until one can see the actual contract. Mr Kirchner concludes: "Within EuropeAid, Unit D4 (Education, Health, Research and Culture) is in charge of this contract with the WHO and will be available to assist you should you require further clarifications. The Head of Unit responsible is Elisabeth Feret."

Testing the Access to Information procedure of the European Commission

As mentioned recently, the European Commission has awarded a grant to the World Health Organization to support the implementation of the FCTC in low and middle income countries. The budget as presented on line was sketchy. According to the EU principles (article 255 of the Treaty), I filed a request for what should be the whole document via this form available on line.  Once the request is registered they are supposed to provide an answer within a delay of 15 working days: that would be around November 3d. Wait and see.

Looking at the recent grant awarded by the European Commission to support the implementation of FCTC in 'lower income countries"

The European Union and the EU countries fund about half of the $9 million FCTC Secretariat budget. The Commission recently awarded WHO-FCTC a complementary grant of Euros 5.2 million. If you want to look at the details of this grant you have to go to this pdf document and scroll down to page 7 to click on the Annex B link and scroll down again. Since I am curious about how funds are allocated I did all those tedious moves. Below are some of my comments.