Pike, Brigid (2009) EU Drugs Action Plan evaluated. Drugnet Ireland, Issue 29, Spring 2009, pp. 24-25.
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The EU places great store on evaluation. The European Commission has published guidelines on evaluating both programmes and policies,1 and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) has made a special study of the evaluation of national drugs strategies.2 In December 2008 the final evaluation of the EU Drugs Action Plan 2005-2008 was published.3 This report provides an interesting case study of how to conduct an evaluation.
Summary of the evaluative framework applied to, and key findings of the evaluation of, the EU Drugs Action Plan 2005–2008
Objectives
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Questions
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Answers
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To establish to what extent the objectives and actions of the Action Plan have been achieved.
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To what extent have the operational objectives and actions in the current EU Action Plan on Drugs been implemented and what are the main outputs?
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The EU Drugs Action Plan is mainly a co-ordination instrument, pulling together the main strands of drug policy. It is a non-binding co-ordination document for member states, which are autonomous in implementing its aims and objectives.
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Have the specific priorities in the Strategy and the operational objectives in the Action Plan been adopted by member states?
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The EU Drugs Strategy and Action Plan are suitably reflected in national policies. The evaluation shows that member states have translated the objectives of the Action Plan into national policy, and/or that these objectives were already reflected in existing documents.
(1) Member states report that the Action Plan reflects the main policy fields at national level. Some national priorities are not covered, mostly owing to differences in the drug situations in member states.
(2) The evaluation shows that the Action Plan supports a process of convergence between member states’ drug policies and helps to achieve policy consistency between countries.
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To understand the relationship between the Action Plan and the actual drug situation.
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What are the overall changes in the drug situation in recent years?
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Although there has not been a significant reduction in the prevalence of drug use, the use of the most prevalent drugs seems to have stabilised and/or fallen slightly. The use of cocaine is showing an upward trend in some member states.
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To what extent can these changes be linked to the implementation of the EU Action Plan on Drugs?
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The stabilisation in prevalence levels of most illicit drugs except for cocaine cannot be linked to specific interventions implemented through the Action Plan.
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To estimate the added value that the Action Plan offered to drug policy in the EU as a whole.
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What is the overall added value of the EU Drugs Action Plan 2005–2008?
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Member states consider that the Action Plan has added value at both EU level and for national policy, where the Action Plan functions as a guiding document.
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What key conclusions and lessons can be drawn from this evaluation for the next plan covering the years 2009 – 2012?
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Obtaining the necessary information
To obtain the information needed to answer the evaluative questions, five sources of information were used. Objective information on trends in the drug situation in Europe and the responses to it was collected, and the views of member states regarding the Action Plan were surveyed. Various analyses were undertaken, including a reflection on the structure, logic and clarity of the EU Drugs Strategy (2005-2012) and the related EU Drugs Action Plan (2005-2008), a review of the implementation of the actions and achievement of the objectives, and an assessment of intra-institutional co-ordination and co-operation in the implementation of the Action Plan.
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