Development & Aid, Europe, Headlines, Health

EU EXPANDS: HIV and Drugs Become a Growing Concern

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, May 5 2004 (IPS) - The enlargement of the European Union could push the bloc into a “major drugs crisis”, a leading international drug policy think-tank warns.

The Senlis Council, an international network that gathers expertise and facilitates new initiatives on drug policy, says two major challenges threaten an enlarged European Union (EU) – the possibility of a Europe-wide HIV epidemic, and increased pressure of trafficking from central and southern Asia.

“With the threat of HIV/AIDS seeping into Europe from the east, combined with high levels of trafficking, Europe could be on the verge of a major drug crisis in terms of consumption rates and public health,” the Senlis Council said in a statement Tuesday (May 4). The Council is based in Senlis town in France.

The Council says that what could turn out to be the largest HIV/AIDS epidemic is currently spreading in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, and could cross into the enlarged EU.

The World Heath Organisation (WHO) estimated in February that the number of AIDS cases across eastern Europe and the Central Asian Republics has risen from 30,000 in 1995 to 1.5 million in 2004, a 50-fold increase in eight years.

The Senlis Council says high infection levels within the injecting drug user community are gradually spreading into the wider population, and fears that if the trend continues infection rates may overtake those in Africa.

WHO says that the numbers of HIV cases in this region are still small compared to an estimated 40 million cases worldwide, with about 27 million in sub-Saharan Africa, but it is concerned that HIV cases are rising rapidly.

EU countries have already started to see “the consequences of their proximity with alarmingly high HIV/AIDS prevalence in Estonia, and to a slightly lesser degree in the other two Baltic States, Latvia and Lithuania, who share a frontier with Russia,” the Council says.

“Free movement of citizens within the enlarged EU could transmit infection brought into the border countries from Russia, Belarus or Ukraine,” Jane Francis from the Senlis Council told IPS.

“To avoid this, prevention measures must be taken not only within the EU where policy is relatively advanced and measures have been taken to try and control the spread of HIV in terms of drug policy, but also in partnership with these neighbouring countries, to avoid the trans-frontier spread of infection and to cut the threat at the root in its country of origin,” she added.

The Council is also concerned that drugs may penetrate the EU’s enlarged borders.

It says as Europe moves further east, it also moves nearer the ‘Balkan route’ – the traditional drug trafficking route which leads from central and south Asia into Europe.

“Pressure from drug trafficking from Asia, which comprises many traditional production countries bears down on Europe’s new frontiers,” the Council said in its report. “An abundant supply of heroin from Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer of opium, is a major threat to the new Europe.”

There are concerns also for countries outside of the EU. “Drug money is on the verge of destroying the recent efforts to stabilise Afghanistan,” Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of the Council said in a statement. “The risk of corruption and of drug lords ruling the country potentially make Afghanistan the ‘Colombia of Europe’.”

The Senlis Council is calling on the EU of 25 to “reinforce and strengthen their commitment to the innovative and evidence-based drug policy measures and responses which have proved efficient in many member states.” The Senlis Council is also urging prevention, education and regulation efforts on consumption based on the recent success in many European countries of curbing the tobacco epidemic.

“Enlargement is a unique opportunity for Europe to illustrate to the international community that pragmatic and realistic policies should take precedence over the purely repressive ‘war on drugs’ orienatted policies which have been failing over the past 40 years,” it said.

“The American ‘war on drugs’ has no place in Europe,” it added. “Europe needs to use its now even larger weight to prove to other parts of the world that the focus of global drug policy must be on solutions and not on war.”

The European Commission, the EU executive, says EU enlargement presents the bloc with “both new challenges and opportunities” on the drugs front.

“We cannot ignore the concern that enlargement will lead to an increase in drug trafficking from and through the central and eastern European countries,” Antonio Vitorino, EU commissioner for justice and home affairs said at a conference in February on ‘European Drug Policy on the Brink of Change’.

“Some of the new member states have traditionally been transit countries for drugs destined for the EU,” he said. “Large-scale drug seizures, especially of heroin, on the Balkans and central European routes confirm that trafficking continues and that drugs are stored in those areas. But we should also bear in mind that the enlargement will provide us with the opportunity to cooperate more closely to tackle the problem.”

The Commission says that the new member states need “all the support available” to ensure that drugs will remain a policy priority in a situation “where action against drugs has to compete for resources with many other priorities.”

It adds that a “major tool in the fight against drug trafficking” is an EU action plan on drugs. All 25 EU member states have committed themselves to the goals of the plan, which provides a guide to setting priorities in the drugs area.

While the plan is not a legally binding document, the Commission says it provides a “strong incentive” for all actors involved to reach the agreed targets.

The Senlis Council says the plan is mainly a coordinating device that works as a framework agreement.

“Apart from this action plan, there is no single EU drug policy and no single EU position on many issues involving drugs and drug-related diseases,” Francis said. “Therefore, on a practical level, the EU could do many things to strengthen its common position and convert it in a common policy.”

A conference on the EU 2005-2009 drug strategy will take place in Dublin next week.