Chair,

Director-General,

Excellencies,

Colleagues,

This statement is made on behalf of the EU and its Member States.

The candidate countries North Macedonia, Montenegro, Ukraine, Republic of Moldova and Bosnia and Herzegovina[*] align themselves with this statement.

We thank the Secretariat for the report of the consultation process around the extension on the Thirteenth General Programme of Work.

We support in principle the new 5 priorities, but GPW13 as a whole has been carefully negotiated and therefore it must remain fully implemented. However, we have understood that full implementation is not possible due to financial or time constraints. It might even become an obstacle for the achievement of the three on billion objectives.

In order to measure achieving the triple billion impact, we welcome the proposal to improve the universal health coverage indicators and support the proposed way forward.

We note that this is the first time the member states can discuss the five new priorities at global level and hear the first reactions by other member states. As the shift in focus by adopting these new priorities can have significant impact, it is important that we have the opportunity as Member States to have further discussions among ourselves and with the Secretariat during the consultations that were requested in resolution WHA75.6.

The GPW13 sets the course for the whole organization, therefore the true impact of the shift in priorities on the other outcome goals in GPW13 should be clear to the membership in advance of the 76^th WHA, for its consideration. In view of the above we propose that the EB takes note of the report of the Secretariat and further consultations follow during inter-session period on this matter.

[*] North Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.