Civil society involvement in drug policy in EU Member States. Assessment report.

On the European Union level, the issue of how to strengthen the civil society involvement (CSI) in drug policy has increasingly attracted attention over the last few years, starting with the presentation of the “Green Paper on the role of Civil Society in Drugs Policy in the European Union” by the European Commission (2006) and the subsequent establishment of the “Civil Society Forum on Drugs” as a platform for regular dialogue on policy development and implementation between the Commission and representatives of European civil society. How the Civil Society Forum on Drugs is to be involved in EU drugs policy is further defined in the current EU Action Plan on Drugs 2017-2020 (Council of Europe 2017). However, the current action plan does not only refer to civil society involvement on the EU level, but also calls for action on the national level to “promote and strengthen dialogue with, and involvement of, civil society and the scientific community in the formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of drug policies”. The successful implementation of best practice in drug demand reduction in the member states, is further hinged (among other indicators) on the “involvement of civil society in the implementation of the standards, including in planning and introduction”. This assessment report will focus on the involvement of civil society in the national drug policies of the EU member states. Its objective is to gain a better insight and create a better understanding of the nature and extent of civil society involvement in drug policy at the national level. The assessment will reflect the status of CSI as condensed in national drug policy documents, analyse the levels of CSI in different drug policy fields, identify and quantify different type of civil society stakeholders in the member states and size up the impact of civil society participation in the decision making process. Furthermore it will analyse barriers and facilitators for CSI and give conclusions and recommendations for promoting and strengthening CSI in the member states. This introduction will be followed by a description of the methods used to reach the above mentioned objectives. Subsequently, the limitations of these methods will be declared before the results of the assessment will be presented. Finally, the main results of the assessment will be discussed against the background of the EUs call for strengthening civil society involvement in the member states