La Commission compte adopter une stratégie visant à réduire la consommation d'alcool[en] 

The Commission is set to adopt, on 24 October 2006, an EU alcohol strategy to reduce the health and social harm related to alcohol consumption. The Commission Communication on the issue will aim to exchange best-practice at EU level and set the minimum legal drinking age at 18. It will also call on the industry to self-regulate and to adopt responsible marketing practices. However, measures such as warning labels on alcoholic products and labelling and advertising restrictions, envisaged in previous drafts, have been removed from the proposal.

A recent industry report on alcohol consumption argues that an EU-wide policy on alcohol-related harm reduction is not necessary, whereas a health alliance criticises industry for increasing marketing efforts that target young consumers and lead to binge drinking . A Finnish presidency priority is to balance the government and industry financial benefits from the production and trade of alcohol with the social and health harms caused by excessive use of alcohol. 

According to the Commission , the total tangible cost of alcohol to EU amounted to 1.3% of GDP in 2003, equivalent to tobacco. Costs include ill-health caused by alcohol, lost productivity through absenteeism, unemployment and lost working years through premature death. "Young people shoulder a disproportionate amount of this burden, with over 10% of youth female mortality and around 25% of youth male mortality being due to alcohol," states the Commission report .