The international framework

1. The European drug policy

1.1 The European institutions as regards drugs

1.2 The EU legal framework as regards drugs

1.2.1 The EU Drugs Strategy 2005-2012

1.2.2 The EU Drugs Action Plan 2005-2008

1.2.3 The transposition of the European guidelines at national level

1.2.4. The Program of community action in the field of public health.

2. The civil society organized at EU level acting in the field of drugs

3. The EU institutions / civil society partnership

4. Conclusion

The policy of the European Union concerning drugs comes under the
UN Drug Control Conventions. This framework of prohibition and "war against drugs" is mainly promoted by the USA.

The Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) is the central policy-making body managing the United Nations International Drug Control Programme. Every year in Vienna, the CND organises a conference for all the signatory states of the conventions. At the time of the "Vienna conference 200", the CND criticised the drug policies of some European member states: much too tolerant… Moreover, some European negotiators consider that the NGOs anti-prohibitionist's action carried out at the time of this conference, which were not balanced by a moderate civil society movement, aided the American movement of "war against drugs" and prevented the positive outcome to the negotiations hoped for by European states. 

The UN Drug Control Conventions are supposed to be evaluated and revised in 2008. It is vitally important that a moderate movement coming from the "civil society" enable positive issues during this important phase…

The CND cooperates officially with the NGOs and the civil society. But this cooperation is mainly developed with NGOs sharing the ideal of "war against drugs".

The International Narcotics Control Board is a body, independent of the states and of the UN, which checks the implementation of the international conventions on drugs.

The World Health Organisation  carries out a action in drugs field within the department of alcohol and of drugs. There is a regional office for Europe.

1.1        The European institutions as regards drugs

The European Union is based on a institutional triangle :

* The European Council;

* The European Parliament;

* The European Commission.

       The European Council (Council of the Ministers or heads of government ­ rotating presidency) is the main decisional body of the EU: it has the legislative power. It's an inter-governmental body.

The Council committee concerned with drugs policies is known as the Horizontal Working Party on Drugs (HWPD). It consists of delegations from the Member States (generally composed of one representative of the Ministry for Health and one of the Home Office), from the Commission, from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drugs Addiction, from Europol and from the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products. Like the Council itself, the HWPD has a rotating presidency.

As this body is inter-governmental, it works in a very diplomatic way and the possibilities for lobbying are extremely limited. In fact it is the lobbying at the national level which can have an impact in this area.

       The European Parliament (The body sharing in some matters the legislative power with the Council) approaches the drugs issues mainly from the point of view of health and the fight against drugs trafficking. The committees responsible are:

The Parliamentary Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) which is in charge of drugs matters;

The Parliamentary committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy (ENVI) which takes part to some reports regarding drugs;

These committees produce incisive reports regarding drugs and security issues. At this level the networks can lobby the MEP in charge of the reports to make their voices heard.

       The European Commission (The body which proposes and carries out the EU policies) also approaches the drugs issues mainly from the point of view of health and the fight against drugs trafficking:

* The DG JAI (Freedom, security and justice) within the Drug Coordination Unit which manages the coordination between the Directorates-General acting in the field of drugs. The DG JAI has contributed to the strengthening of city networks regarding drugs (via the question of urban safety) by financing projects within the framework of programmes like STOP.

* The DG SANCO (Health and consumers protection) carries out the Program of community action in the field of public health. Within this framework, the DG SANCO subsidies projects issued from the civil society.

* Some city networks arising from the URBACT and URBAL programmes carry out drug-related projects.

Other Directorates-General are involved in drugs matter, like the DG Enlargement in the framework of the PHARE program.

The European Commission aims to develop a transparent policy of partnership with the civil society. 

Other EU bodies are involved in the field of drugs :

Ø       The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) is an EU agency providing the Community and its Member States with objective, reliable and comparable information at European level concerning drugs and drug addiction and their consequences. The EMCDDA works with the support of a national focal points network called REITOX. The EMCDDA promotes the exchange of good practices by setting up a database of projects called EDDRA.

Politically, the EMCDDA is the tool which enables the EU to base its drugs policies on scientific arguments instead of ideological points of view.

The EMCDDA publishes an Annual Report: the state of the drugs problem in the European Union and Norway.

Ø       The European economic and social committee is a EU advisory body which represents the voice of the civil society (mainly from the economical field). The section on Employment, social Affairs and citizenship is qualified to deliver its opinion on the drug policies.

Ø       The Committee of the Regions is also an advisory body which represents the voice of the regions. The Commission for economic and social policy is qualified to deliver its opinion on the drug policies.

These two committees take part in the joint decision procedures (they give their Opinions). So they influence the legislative procedures on drugs issues.

Other European institution :

Ø       The Council of Europe is an institution independent of the European Union (it gathers 45 states). Within the Council of Europe, the Pompidou Group provides a forum for European ministers, officials, specialists and other professionals to co-operate and exchange information related to drug misuse and drug trafficking.

The general EU legal framework as regards drugs is based on two different legal grounds:  partially communautarised policy in matter of health and intergovernmental co-operation in matter of fighting against traffic. Basically, the European drug policy is an addition of national policies that Member States try to harmonize.

The prevention of drug dependency is based on Article 152 of the EC Treaty on public health.

The European Council establishes the general guidelines of the European drug policy in a EU Drugs Strategy. It is the non binding framework that Member States committed themselves in order to harmonize their own policies. The EU Drugs Strategy is designed by the Horizontal Working Party on Drugs in a very diplomatic way and the civil society and the Committee of the Regions were not seriously consulted at this level.

Some of the most significant guidelines:

"This new Drugs Strategy is based first and foremost on the fundamental principles of EU law and, in every regard, upholds the founding values of the Union: respect for human dignity, liberty, democracy, equality, the rule of law and human rights. It aims to protect and improve the wellbeing of society and of the individual, to offer a high level of security for the general public and to take a balanced, integrated approach to the drugs problem".

"The EU aims at a contribution to the attainment of a high level of health protection, well-being and social cohesion by complementing the Member States’ action in reducing drug-related health damage, including information and prevention"

"The present integrated, multidisciplinary and balanced approach of combining demand and supply reduction will remain the basis of the Union’s approach to the drugs problem in the future. […]. A balanced approach to the drugs problem also requires adequate consultation with a broad group representative of the relevant NGOs and civil society. Especially in the process of drawing up action plans, their advice should be taken into account".

"to reduce drug-related harm, prevention is to be preferred to treatment, treatment is to be preferred to harm reduction and harm reduction is to be preferred to abstaining from efforts to minimize the health risks for drug users and society as a whole and;

preventive measures, treatment options and harm reduction measures should be offered in an integrated manner".

"The Action plan follows the structure and the objectives of the EU drugs strategy (2005-2012). It focuses on two policy domains - demand reduction and supply reduction - and two cross-cutting themes - international cooperation and research, information and evaluation [1] ".

"The ultimate aim of the Action Plan is to significantly reduce the prevalence of drug use among the population and to reduce the social harm and health damage caused by the use of and trade in illicit drugs. It aims to provide a framework for a balanced approach to reducing both supply and demand through a number of specific actions".

Some objectives linked to our concerns:

-          Ensure a balanced, multidisciplinary approach

-          Strengthen the involvement of the civil society

-          Improve coverage of, access to, quality and evaluation of drug demand reduction programmes and ensure effective dissemination of evaluated best practices.

-          Improve access for addicts to all relevant services and treatment options designed to reduce harm, in due regard with national legislation

-          Share experiences and best practices in preventing the distribution of drugs at street level and present the results

-          Encourage research networks, universities and professionals to develop/create networks of excellence for the optimal use of resources and effective dissemination of results

Officially the civil society was consulted to help the Commission to establish the draft of the Action Plan. But concretely this consultation consisted of the possibility of sending comments to the European Commission via their Website.

1.2.3  The transposition of the European guidelines at national level

According to the EMCDDA: "The trend for Member States to adopt a ‘national drugs strategy’, a cornerstone of EU drug policy, was reported in last year’s annual report and continued in 2003. In 2003, drugs plans and programmes were adopted in Denmark, Germany, Lithuania and Slovenia. In 2004, Estonia and France are expected to follow suit, bringing the total number of Member States that operate a drug policy under the framework of an overall national drugs strategy to 21 out of a total of 25 (22 out of 26 if Norway is included).

The fact that ‘national drugs strategies’ have been implemented so widely in a relatively short period of time (1997­2004), and within a well-defined geographical area, affords the opportunity to make comparisons of the phenomenon in different Member States and obtain an EU-wide perspective.

As a first observation, it is becoming more and more common to adopt a holistic approach to drug policy, incorporating both demand- and supply-reduction activities, the so-called ‘balanced approach’".

Most of the current networks have been supported by the Programmes on Public Health (DG SANCO).

At the beginning of the 90s, the Member States (the Council) and the European Parliament decided that health aspects of the drugs policies have to be communautarised and created, in the framework of the Programme of Community action in the field of public health, the Program of community action for the prevention of drug dependence 1996/2000. Until 2002 the European Commission regularly called for proposals (prolongation of the program): projects emanating from the civil society could thus be granted. Networks were set up and approximately 20 projects per year were subsidized.

The new Program for community action in the field of public health 2003/2008  presents a different political orientation: suppression of the programs giving priority to specific health sectors (Cancer, AIDS, drugs...), centring financial support on transverse objectives for the benefit of the whole sectors and on selection of bigger projects than before. The consequence is that 4 to 5 times fewer projects concerning drugs will be subsidised each year. In 2004 most of the networks successfully realised that they have to build big coalitions if they are to continue their work with the financial support of the European Commission. Projects like "Democracy, Cities & Drugs" or "Correlation" are examples of these coalitions.

There are several types of networks acting in the field of drugs at an EU level:

·         Networks of  institutional services: network of the phone helplines, network of the documentation centres,;

·         Networks of professionals;

·         Operational Networks (European NGOs' projects) working on very specific topics: prevention in the party scene, drug users in prison, use of drugs in the gypsy community, itinerant drug users, training, substitution treatments...  ;

·         Networks of  local authorities;

·         Networks of political lobbying.

For an exhaustive list of these networks, have a look to the links.

These networks generally aim at the exchange of practices, the carrying out of joint projects and the lobbying of institutions. Some of these networks are subsidized by projects from the European Commission within the framework of call for proposals.

There are great differences between these networks:

·         the scale (from cross-border to pan-European);

·         the approach (from holistic to specific);

·         the type of member (NGOs, professionals, local authorities);

·         the legal form (non profit Association, informal network);

·         finally, their objectives (exchange of good practices, training, research, pilot actions on major scale, lobbying).

Until 2004, these networks worked separately (at the time of the calls for proposals they were working individually: concurrence) but now they have developed in the form of partnerships and coalitions (see previous chapter).

In fact the European Commission's choice to unify the previous programmes and to favour bigger projects is not specific to this programme. In many other fields the same thing is happening (culture, environment). Although there is a pragmatic background to this choice (fewer programmes and projects to manage) there is also a more political will: In a first phase, the objective was to set up trans-national networks. The tool of small projects targeting specific sectors was relevant. Now the objective is to generalise and structure the emerging civil society. In this way the support is open to all the sectors and the submission of bigger projects obliges the existing networks to create coalitions. The civil society is organising itself more strongly.

There are two principal levels of partnership between civil society and European institutions:

·         The definition of the policies: it is the level of the consultation of the interested parties which enables the institutions to design the European policies. Most of the networks' representatives complain that civil society is not involved in the definition of the EU policies. This situation is mainly due to the fact that the "European Drugs Policy" is an inter-governmental policy. The various institutions have no mandate to organise consultations and some of the member states like Sweden or Italy are currently opposed to the strengthening of a civil society organised at EU level: the networks are mainly in favour of the harm reduction policies. The involvement of networks of cities in the European debates seems very useful, as their point of view is more oriented to a balance between the different responses.

·         The setting up of the policies: with regard to the NGOs, the implementation of the programmes is mainly subsidised by the Commission. However, the exclusive system of financing by projects does not enable the European networks to function in a stable and sustainable way. Some networks have died out for lack of means at the end of their project, either because the following project was not adopted, or because they had not succeeded in making the end of the previous project link in with the beginning of the following one. This worsens the problem of stability of the network co-ordinators who cannot have permanent paid functions.

It is clear that Member States and regions can take part in the financing of the partnerships, but in practice only certain states and regions do so. The consequence is that the form of leadership of organisations at European level originates from a small number of countries and regions   (the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Emilia Romagna region, Catalonia...).  

Another problem is that the turnover of civil servants and the lack of human resources within the institutions limit the relations between the Commission and the subsidised networks to strictly administrative and accounting aspects.  The contents of the projects are not discussed.

In addition, the complexity of the European institutional framework means that only the "skilled" European networks succeed in being represented within the institutions and in co-operating with them. For the moment, the European civil society remains an "elite" which doesn't represent all the European stakeholders. 

To finish, there is no common space for all the institutions regarding drugs issues which is accessible for the civil society. It would be interesting to create a common area to allow all the actors involved, both institutional and those from the civil society, to discuss together and exchange information. There is a project to set up such a forum and during the following years we will see if the institutions succeed in doing so. Of course, to increase the chance of success, the networks have to co-operate constructively with the institutions.

The European drug policies are in fact the most tolerant ones in the world taking into account the strict context defined by the International Conventions. The concept of harm reduction (acceptance of the use of drugs) is officially acknowledged. Using pragmatic and scientific arguments the Member States of the EU develop their policies and try to soften the international legal framework.

However, the European drugs policies consist mainly of recommendations (EU Drugs Strategy and Action Plan) the Member States have drawn up and are then free to apply or not, and of financial support for some networks of the civil society.

The differences in terms of legislation and the solutions implemented by the various states and their successive governments (disparity and instability of the policies) remain great. The consequences of this are:

·         The absence of a clear message to the target public;

·         drug users travel in the cross-border regions, which, for example, poses road safety problems;

·         Persons who follow substitution treatments experience severe difficulties maintaining the continuity of their treatment when they cross the internal borders of the Union.

These are only some examples. The cultural differences cannot be ignored and a monolithic policy is not neither interesting nor appropriate.

Finally, the European civil society is not really consulted at EU level but the European Commission is supposed to write soon a Green Paper on this matter in order to establish a regular consultation of the European networks.