European Network of People who Use Drugs CLG
EuroNPUD
EuroNPUD is the regional drug user rights network in the European Union and its neighbouring countries.
ID: 986335097065-18
Lobbying Activity
Response to EU Drugs Strategy and European Action Plan Against Drug Trafficking
26 Sept 2025
European Network of People who Use Drugs supports a decisive shift away from punitive, supply-control approaches toward integrated strategies rooted in public health, human rights, and the meaningful involvement of people with lived and living experience of drug use. Prevention should be grounded in communities and avoid moralistic or punitive framing. People who use drugs provide unique insights into risk environments, social drivers, and stigma dynamics. The Strategy should require that prevention programs be co-designed with peer networks and community organisations to ensure reach and relevance. Effective models must integrate housing, education, employment, and mental health rather than focusing only on individual behaviour change. Peer educators and outreach workers should be recognised as professionals and fairly compensated, not treated as unpaid volunteers. Supply reduction and law enforcement must be calibrated with safeguards to prevent harm. Disrupting supply often leads to riskier substances, dosage volatility, displacement, and overdose risk. Cooperation with third countries or Member State agencies should include health and human rights impact assessments to ensure interdiction does not undermine access to essential services. The Strategy must commit to not criminalising individuals who use drugs. This prevents diversion of police resources toward marginalised people and fosters trust between communities and health systems. Harm reduction and treatment require a full-spectrum package: syringe and needle provision, supervised consumption sites, drug checking, overdose prevention (including naloxone), safer supply, peer support, gender-sensitive services, and low-threshold access to opioid agonist treatment (OAMT). Punitive measures within OAMT, such as coercive urine testing or exclusion for use of unregulated substances, must be abolished. Community-led organisations should be central in delivering these services. Peer-led initiatives reach populations excluded from traditional systems and build trust. Involvement must extend beyond service delivery: people with living and lived experience should hold roles in governance, design, monitoring, evaluation, and decision-making. Peer workers must be equitably compensated, recognised as professionals, and offered training, career development, and employment protections. Member States should adopt social contracting schemes to provide stable, multi-year funding and reduce bureaucratic barriers. Monitoring and evaluation must embed community leadership. Community organisations should collect and report data on outcomes, equity, and effectiveness. Indicators should capture not only outputs (e.g. needles distributed) but outcomes (overdose reduction, retention in care, reduced stigma). Data must be disaggregated by subpopulations (women, LGBTQIA+, migrants, people in prison) to expose inequities. The EU should provide capacity building and technical assistance for rigorous monitoring. Transparency must be guaranteed: community data should feed into national and EU progress reports and be publicly accessible while safeguarding privacy. Governance and funding must guarantee systematic inclusion of people who use drugs in all advisory, steering, and decision-making bodies at EU, national, and regional levels. Benchmarks for community participation should be set with justification required if absent. Financial allocations for harm reduction and community involvement should form a non-fungible share of the budget (at least 510%). Funding mechanisms must be simplified and barrier-free, with multi-year grants and flexible reporting. The EU should also create a dedicated instrument to scale up peer-led organisations across Member States, supporting capacity building, innovation, and cross-border collaboration. A strategy designed without communities will fall short. A strategy built with us can save lives, strengthen trust, and deliver a human rights-based Europe.
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