To improve the EU’s response to “the new health and safety challenges posed by illicit drugs”, the new European Drugs Agency is starting its work in Lisbon.
The new European Union Drug Control Agency (EUDA), which strengthens the powers and mandate of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, begins its work on Tuesday in Lisbon, but the official inauguration ceremony will take place on Wednesday.
The official opening ceremony of this European Union (EU) body, based in Lisbon for the past 25 years, will be attended by the Minister for Home Affairs, Margarida Blasco, along with the Secretary of State for Health, Ana Povo, and the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, and the executive director of EUDA, Aléxis Goosdeel, who is travelling from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA).
According to the body, this change is the result of new legislation that comes into force on Tuesday and that revises the mandate and designation of the Observatory and officially creates the EUDA, which will have new instruments and reinforced powers. to improve the EU response “to the new health and security challenges posed by illicit drugs” and a panorama of consumption, new substances and trafficking that has undergone changes in recent years.
Following an external evaluation of the EMCDDA, the European Commission asked the agency in January 2022 for a broader and more proactive mandate to address the new challenges posed by an increasingly complex drug phenomenon and the emergence of new potent substances. This legislative process was completed in June 2023, which will put the EMCDDA in a one-year transition phase to become EUDA.
The new agency, which will continue to operate in Cais do Sodré, Lisbon, has as its main objective to strengthen the EU’s level of preparedness in the fight against drug use and trafficking. Their work is organized into four categories of interconnected services.
Firstly, it will be responsible for helping the EU and its Member States anticipate future drug-related challenges and their consequences, as well as issuing real-time warnings about new drug-related risks and threats to health and safety.
Its mission is also to help the EU and its Member States strengthen their responses to the drug phenomenon and to facilitate, “at EU level, the exchange of knowledge and learning in the field of drug policies and interventions, based on concrete evidence”.
To ensure these aims, new mechanisms have been created for AUDA, namely a European Drug Alert System, which will issue alerts when serious drug-related risks appear on the market, and which will complement the existing EU Rapid Alert System (SAR) on New Psychoactive Substances.
They also have as mechanisms a European Threat Assessment System, which will strengthen the way the EU prepares for and reacts to emerging or potential threats to health and security, and a European Network of Forensic and Toxicological Laboratories.
This network of laboratories will promote the exchange of information on new trends and train national toxicologists in the Member States and forensic drug experts.
Source: Observadora
