European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction EMCDDA: drugs in the Union. Annual report 1997

Adopting the report by Mrs Anne-Marie SCHAFFNER (UPE, F) on the 1997 annual report of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) in accordance with Article 52 of the EP rules of procedure, the European Parliament called on the EMCDDA in the short term to step up its efforts to standardise key items of data in the area of the reduction in the demand for drugs and drug-related health risks (e.g. drug-related deaths, infection rates, crimes committed by drug addicts). It welcomed the progress made by the EMCDDA since 1995 and called on the EMCDDA to make the improvements required to develop reliable and comparable methods, data systems and key indicators without delay. It called in particular on the Member States to make every effort to ensure the comparability of data transmitted to the EMCDDA. It also called on the EMCDDA to assess the various anti-drugs strategies implemented in the Member States and to submit that assessment to Parliament as an aid to decision-making. Similarly, the Monitoring Centre should draw up common definitions and indicators with a view to carrying out a cost-benefit assessment of the drugs policies and pilot projects carried out in the various EU Member States, taking account of socioeconomic and public order aspects as well as health aspects. At the same time, it does not wish the EMCDDA report to confine itself to a presentation of the state of the drugs problem and looks for comprehensive analyses to be made available to the institutions in question in the Member States. It regards it as essential that the EMCDDA should make a start on incorporating the applicant countries and Cyprus into the Reitox network give greater publicity to the summary of its annual report. The EMCDDA should also deal with the priority areas laid down in its constituent regulation and expand the information on legal issues in its publications; to this end it should prepare a CD-ROM containing the legal provisions adopted at European level on drugs. Parliament also called for an increase in the budget of the EMCDDA and for communication between Parliament and the EMCDDA to be stepped up. Finally, it called on the EMCDDA to provide reliable and comparable statistics and data for the purposes of the forthcoming EU action plan to combat drugs.�