Herewith, we, as members of the European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies, a pan-European platform of NGOs and individual citizens working in the field of drugs, call your attention to an urgent matter which deserves your intervention.

We have reason to believe that the European Commission is manipulating and undermining dialogue mechanisms with civil society and it is using funds that were allocated for these mechanisms by the European Parliament for top-down initiatives that nobody outside the European Commission has asked for.

Concretely we refer to the way in which the Drugs Coordination Unit at the Directorate for Justice, Freedom and Security, has dealt with the so-called “Civil Society Forum on Drug Policy in the EU”.

Our conclusion is that the Commission is trying to transform the Civil Society Forum into an expensive chatroom, and has diverted part of the money that was meant for CSF to an anti-drug propaganda campaign that nobody has asked for.

Report of the SC meeting with the Anti Drugs Coordination Unit of the European Commission, Brussels

Thursday September 3rd, 2009

We write to you as members of the Steering Committee of the European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies, ENCOD, on the issue of the possible participation of our organisation in the European Action on Drugs. The SC of ENCOD was renewed during our General Assembly in June this year.

As we understand it, the EAD-proposal does not follow logically from the preceding discussions and deliberations in the CSF, and we have not had an adequate response to our earlier criticism on this issue.

Announcing its European Action on Drugs, the European Commission invites European citizens to take "practical and creative initiatives that positively influence drug-related behaviour in European society".