At yesterday’s meeting of the Committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), of which I am a member, Mr. Alexis Goosdeel, director of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), presented the organization’s mission and activities.
In my address I thanked the Centre’s leadership and staff for their important work so far, I mentioned my own personal involvement with the matter of drug addiction for over three decades, working with the therapeutic communities in Greece, I talked about the reasons that, even today -in spite of repeated information campaigns- push our youth to drug abuse and I called for every one of my colleagues, every democratic party:
To continue to support the EMCDDA’s work.
To vote for budgetary amendment 5803, tabled jointly with fellow SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance – GUE/NGL MEP Petros Kokkalis, so that the EMCDDA’s funds are not curtailed, but instead raised, from 16 million euros, to nearly 18.
Because I firmly believe that beyond lofty aspirations and credit for their good work, the organizations that produce tangible results in this difficult struggle, deserve to be equipped with the tools necessary to keep up the good fight.
Because I know that EMCDDA is one of those organizations.
Because Europe must show solidarity to the disenfranchised.
Because Europe, and we ourselves, are also responsible for the abasement, the decline of human dignity brought about by drug addiction.
Director Goosdeel took the floor, to make some final, thankful remarks; in Greek, to our pleasant surprise!
