Assessment of civil society involvement in the field of drug policies in Europe

This report is the work of the Civil Society Forum on Drugs (CSFD), an expert group of the European Commission (EC) consisting of more than 40 civil society representatives across Europe working in a variety of professional fields. One of the thematic working groups of the Forum aims to promote the meaningful involvement of civil society in drug policy decision-making. With a two-year DG JUST Drug Policy grant from the European Commission, the CSFD conducted research to map civil society involvement (CSI) in Europe and formulated recommendations for policy-makers and civil society actors to improve existing processes and mechanisms. Coordinated by the Rights Reporter Foundation and AFEW International, the working group conducted desk research to assess current documents, reports and articles about the meaningful involvement of civil society in the field of drug policies. The findings of this literature review were published in a report in 2020. Based on the findings, the CSFD created a report with recommended minimum quality standards for CSI in the field of drug policy, published in 2021.
The report aims to guide both decision-makers and civil society on how to create mechanisms that facilitate the building of dialogue and partnership between them. As a third step in the EC-funded project, the Forum's thematic working group on CSI conducted an online survey of civil society actors from across Europe using a questionnaire to assess their perceptions about existing CSI mechanisms. This current report highlights the findings of this survey. The report consists of five major parts. In the first chapter, we describe the research methods and data sources. Second, we map existing CSI mechanisms in participating countries and describe the nature of exchange mechanisms at both local (city) and national level. In the third part, we focus on existing formal CSI mechanisms and the way they operate, with some examples of their work. In the fourth part of the report, we assess the perceptions of research participants on the quality of CSI in their country based on the nine overarching principles (transparency, balance, timeliness, approachability, competency, openness, autonomy, sustainability and relevance) adopted by the 2021 report on the quality standards for CSI in the field of drug policy.