Transcript ELDD Reflection – past, present and future ELDD 9/2

ELDD Reflection – past, present and
future
29th Meeting of the Scientific Committee, 18 Nov 2008
Initial thoughts
• ELDD conceived in 1998, online since 2001
• Requirement to fill a knowledge gap – varying
drug laws around Europe, not easy public
access to them
• Sensitive subject: MB to appoint LCs, NFPs
continue to report laws annually in context
• LCs should submit laws in national language,
with translations obliged by UN Conventions
• Based on translations, EMCDDA could read
laws and write comparative studies.
Changing situations, priorities
• Enlargement of 2004 etc – now 23 languages and
counting…
• Very few translations of legal texts received,
despite UN treaty requirements
• Increasing number of national online legal
databases
• ELDD research carried out more on basis of
questionnaires and NFP reports than on legal texts
• We now have detailed feedback on demand for
pages of ELDD via web statistics
Change in EMCDDA legal basis, tasks
• 1993 EMCDDA Regulation: Priority area 2 of the Annex
is “National and Community strategies and policies (with
special emphasis on international, bilateral and
Community policies, action plans, legislation, activities
and agreements)”.
• 2006 EMCDDA Regulation: Article 2, Tasks: (b)
Improvement of data-comparison methods …(i)
ensuring improved comparability, objectivity and
reliability of data at European level …; in particular, the
Centre shall develop tools and instruments to help
Member States to monitor and evaluate their national
policies and the Commission to monitor and evaluate
Union policies; …(ii) facilitating and structuring
information exchange in terms of both quality and
quantity (databases)
Reflection paper
• Online for seven years – what result?
• Basic evaluation against original objectives
• Given the changes, how to focus our work in
future?
Based on interviews with EMCDDA staff,
including Director, Scientific Coordinator, four
Heads of Units
ELDD current content
• Legal Text section 793 texts from 28 countries, and 69 EU
texts. 121 of the 714 non-EN national texts have translations
in EN. Texts per country vary from 1 in HU; 2 in CY; 3 in BG,
EE, MT to 146 in ES; 133 in GR. 15 of 28 countries have 10
texts or less.
• Country Profiles Standardised 5-8 page descriptions of all
MS drug legislations and EU.
• Topic Overview section 14 TOs (summary and table); driving,
substitution treatment, workplace testing, NSPs, precursor
penalties…
• Legal Reports section 16 reports: Substance Table,
Legislative approaches to illicit drug use, Cannabis
Monograph chapter, drug asset funds, new drug control
systems (in work) …
User demand for content over 6 mths (Feb-Jul 08)
Section
Legal Text Search
Top 5 pages download
range
240 – 104
Country Profiles
1472 – 354
Topic Overviews
5519 – 1397
Legal Reports
980 – 608
Of the top 40 downloads, one (#38) was a legal text.
ELDD Objectives and basic evaluation
Two main original objectives of ELDD:
• Availability and Updating of the relevant texts of the law on
drugs applied in the EU member States
• - not very well done.
• Research and analysis on specific selected subjects in the
areas of the application of the drug laws, in order to
exchange good practices and support political decisions.
• - very well done.
Is the former still necessary?
Reflection Paper – Options for the future
Some 34 options were outlined, subdivided into :
1. Options regarding network responsibilities
and management;
2. Options regarding database content;
3. Options regarding marketing of ELDD.
We request ScC opinion on two…
Request for Scientific Committee’s Opinion
• To update the rationale for ELDD: “To provide
reliable statements on aspects of countries’ drug
legislation, and to contribute to analysis and
development of tools that help Member States
monitor and evaluate their national drug policies”
• EMCDDA update Legal Text Section based on
annual NFP reports – law title and summary in EN.
Thank you.