Today, the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA) has published its first three-year work programme (Single programming document 2025–2027), outlining strategic objectives and initiatives to strengthen the EU’s preparedness on drugs.

Europe is facing new and serious drug challenges, and our mission is to boost the EU’s readiness to tackle them. The programme draws on the four strategic functions which guide our services: Anticipate, Alert, Respond and Learn.

Anticipate

Building on three decades of drug monitoring, the agency will enhance its situational analysis through new initiatives, including a redesigned annual report on the drug phenomenon and emerging trends. A geostrategic perspective will be integrated through in-depth analyses of the EU drug market and data from third countries. Additionally, increased investment in foresight capacity will enable scenario-building and prospective analyses.

Alert

The EU Early Warning System (EWS) on new psychoactive substances, operational since 1997, will continue its role in identifying new synthetic drugs appearing on the market. It will be complemented by two new capabilities: the European Drug Alert System (EDAS) and the European Threat Assessment System (ETAS), both set to become fully operational in 2025. These systems will enhance timely health and security risk communications, with several pilot threat assessment exercises planned for this year.

Respond

Based on the drug alerts and new threat assessments, the EUDA will support the EU Member States in assessing their readiness and optimising interventions through timely, accurate and evidence-based responses.

Learn

The fourth strategic dimension of our new service delivery model is learning. This spans capacity development activities, which will be diversified and made more accessible to frontline workers in the drug field through the EUDA training platform PLATO. Under the same service category, the agency will also support the design and evaluation of drug policies at both EU and national levels, particularly as the current EU drugs strategy and action plan on drugs (2021–2025) and the EU Security Union Strategy (2020–2025) reach their conclusion.

Collaboration and transformation

This year, the EUDA will introduce a new communication strategy designed to reflect the needs of our broader set of stakeholders, partners, networks and tasks. True to our core values, we are positioning ourselves as a trustworthy, modern and forward-looking agency. This will be facilitated via our largest business transformation programme to date, which will result in a more agile, adaptable, customer-centric, digitally-enabled and impactful EUDA.

Successful delivery of EUDA services will depend on strong collaboration with networks and partners, in particular with the Reitox network of national focal points, and the newly established network of forensic and toxicological laboratories. The agency will also strengthen partnerships at international level, following a strategic approach under the new EUDA international cooperation framework, which will be adopted in 2025.

To bring this vision to life, the EUDA will work closely with the European Commission, Parliament, and Council — its key institutional partners — to ensure its services meet their needs. Guidance from the new EUDA Management Board and Scientific Committee will help steer this transformation. Together with its partners, the EUDA is committed to strengthening EU preparedness on drugs and delivering real impact.

Notes

(¹) EUDA Single Programming Document 2025–2027 (available in English). It contains the 2025 work programme.