The current EU drug landscape is marked by an increased availability and diversity of illicit drugs, posing growing security and health concerns. Emerging drug use patterns and the widespread availability of a broader range of drugs, with substances often at high potency or purity or in new combinations pose new challenges for demand and harm reduction services and health risks may be growing1. The increased use of cocaine has resulted in greater health costs, including among vulnerable populations while concerns around cannabis, the most used illicit substance, include reports of acute toxicity cases in hospitals, linked to high potency products. Additional challenges include greater market integration of illicit drugs and new psychoactive substances, as well as a wider availability and use of synthetic substances. Organised crime pervades and undermines the European economy and society, and drugs trafficked into the EU, especially cocaine, are at all-time high2. According to the 2024 Europol report on Decoding the EU’s most threatening criminal networks, half of these are involved in drug trafficking, while 68% of them use violence in their modus operandi, often to enable drug trafficking operations3. In addition, online availability of illicit drugs poses regulatory challenges and European drug producers and traffickers are closely involved with criminal networks from drug producing areas, such as Latin America, expanding their trafficking routes and methods to smuggle drugs into the EU.

In December 2020 the EU adopted the third EU Drugs Strategy 2021-20254 accompanied by an Action Plan on drugs5 (hereafter ‘drugs strategic framework’ or ‘drugs strategy and action plan’) setting out the EU drugs framework for the next five years. The Strategy is structured around three overarching objectives (or pillars): (I) drug supply reduction (enhancing security), (II) drug demand reduction (prevention and treatment), and (III) addressing drug-related harms; and three cross-cutting themes that support the pillars: international cooperation; research, innovation, and foresight; and coordination, governance, and implementation. To achieve its aim, it encompasses 11 strategic priorities: (1) to disrupt high-risk drug-related organised crime groups, address links with other security threats and improve crime prevention; (2) to increase the detection of illicit drug trafficking including drug precursors at EU points of entry and exit; (3) to tackle the exploitation of logistical and digital channels for drug trafficking and increase seizures of drugs, in close cooperation with the private sector; (4) to dismantle drug production and cultivation, prevent the diversion of drug precursors and address environmental  damage; (5) to prevent drug use and raise awareness of the adverse effects of drugs; (6) to ensure access to and strengthen treatment and care services; (7) to promote risk- and harm-reduction interventions to protect and support people who use drugs; (8) to address the health and social needs of people who use drugs in prison settings and after release; (9) to strengthen international cooperation with non-EU countries, regions and international partners; (10) to promote research, innovation and foresight by building synergies between the EU and Member States and increasing preparedness for future challenges and crises; and (11) to ensure adequate coordination, governance and implementation of the Strategy and Action Plan, with adequate resources at EU and national levels.

The Action Plan defines 85 actions6 to be implemented to achieve the 11 strategic priorities under the three pillars and cross-cutting themes above-mentioned. It broadly presents a five-year plan, although there is no specific timeline per action. An indicative list of responsible implementing parties includes Member States, EU institutions and agencies and civil society7, who shall act in accordance with their respective role and mandate as defined by EU law; however, the action plan does not identify specific actors behind the attainment of these priorities, limiting any causal link between achievements of the strategy and action plan and responsible parties. In October 2023, due to the growing threat stemming from drug-related organised crime, the Commission put forward as an additional initiative, the EU Roadmap to boost the fight against drug trafficking and organised crime (EU Roadmap)8. Complementing the drugs strategy and action plan, it listed 17 operational actions to be undertaken at short notice at EU level with the European Commission and EU agencies as key actors, leveraging the drugs strategic framework.

The drugs strategy tasked the Commission to initiate an overall “external evaluation of the implementation of the Strategy and of the Action Plan”. The main objective of the evaluation was to assess, to the extent possible, whether the Strategy and Action Plan contributed to the three overarching objectives (or pillars) framed under the Strategy: reduce drug supply, reduce drug demand and address drug-related harms, and ultimately assess its effectiveness. Notwithstanding the fact that the implementation of actions is ongoing, a study was carried out by an external contractor during 20249, to support the Commission in its assessment. Several stakeholders including national authorities, international organisations, private sector, civil society and academia were consulted as part of a Public Consultation, dedicated surveys and over 100 targeted interviews and a civil society workshop, all under close cooperation with DG Migration and Home Affairs – Drugs policy unit. An interservice group on drugs was set up for this evaluation and consulted. The Commission presents its assessment in this staff working document - evaluation, with a full analysis of the methodology and consultation activities in Annex II and V.

The scope of this evaluation focuses on analysing the potential achievement of the 11 strategic priorities and 85 actions against the Better Regulation criteria of effectiveness, efficiency, coherence, EU added value and relevance10. The point of departure is to assess the state of implementation of these 11 strategic priorities and corresponding actions by looking at a variety of elements including evolving legal frameworks, new or strengthened structures of key actors that have a role in drugs policy (e.g. Europol and EU Drugs agency), measures implemented at national level, or new policy frameworks that could have contributed to the strategic objectives (e.g. EU Roadmap). The result of this assessment is used to afterwards evaluate whether implementation efforts contributed to achieve the objectives of the strategy. The evaluation aims to cover developments from January 2021 until 2025 however, the data analysed was collected in early 2024 and refers to the reference year 202211.

Within this context, it should be noted that the evaluation found several limitations: first, as stated above, the availability of data on drugs remains constrained by a two-year delay between the data is collected, analysed and reported by national authorities; second, there is limited availability of evidence related to the implementation of actions by the Member States due to differences in reporting, national policy and political context and lack of impact indicators; third, although the action plan lists 11 indicators12, these are not attributed to actions and most of them are non-measurable EU-wide; and last, governance is questioned as strategic priorities and actions are not directly attributed to concrete responsible parties either at EU or national level. Finally, this evaluation outlines lessons learnt and the potential way forward to consider when shaping the future EU drugs policy framework before the expiry of the current drugs strategy and action plan on 31 December 2025. It is accompanied by six annexes that contain procedural information, the methodology used, a description of the evaluation criteria (evaluation matrix), a cost-benefit overview, a summary of the stakeholder consultation and synopsis report and the Traffic light assessment evaluating the implementation of actions based on the external study.