In one of the most newsworthy weeks in living memory, with the global economy teetering on the edge of a full meltdown amid the Trump administration’s toing and froing on ‘reciprocal’ tariffs, little attention has been paid to the world of cannabis.
Yet since the beginning of April, a number of noteworthy developments have taken place across some of Europe’s most significant cannabis markets.
From Germany’s coalition agreement to the expansion of the Netherlands’ cannabis pilot and the Czech Republic’s medical cannabis market, industry news has managed to match the heady pace of the global news cycle.
German coalition government agreed, but cannabis law still up in the air
The German, and indeed global cannabis industry, has been waiting with bated breath to hear the ultimate outcome of the recent federal election after the largely anti-cannabis CDU/CSU won the most seats, but not enough to form a government.
With speculation reaching fever pitch, and increasing pressure placed on CDU leader Friedrich Merz to form a government amid an emerging global trade war, this week it was announced that a coalition deal has been struck with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), as was widely anticipated.
In a news conference on Wednesday, April 09, Merz declared that Germany was ‘back on track’, and now had a ‘government that is capable of action and strong’.
Amid a raft of policy announcements, the fate of Germany’s CanG act was given a single mention, leaving more questions than answers.
In the autumn, the new coalition says it plans to ‘conduct an open-ended evaluation of the law’. It is worth noting that even without the new coalition agreement, a review was already due to take place in this timeframe.
Despite the CDU/CSU’s election pledge to roll back cannabis reforms, the lack of immediate announcement suggests they may have failed to get any such measures past its new partners, who were the driving force behind CanG.
According to documents seen by Reuters, The CDU is set to take charge of the economy and foreign ministries as well as the chancellery, while the SPD would run finance and defence.
However, there is as yet no indication who is set to run the Ministry of Health, which will have an outsized influence on cannabis policy moving forward.
Malta to impose new cannabis restrictions
Malta’s Parliamentary Secretary for Reforms, Rebecca Buttigieg, announced a raft of proposed changes to the country’s cannabis framework after it became one of the first in the European Union to decriminalise cannabis consumption for adult-use purposes in 2021.
The measures, announced earlier this week during the second reading of Bill 128 in Parliament, have already proven divisive, with some welcoming them as long-overdue improvements and others calling them ‘extreme measures’ that ‘turn back the clock’.
Most significantly, offences committed by Malta’s ‘Cannabis Harm Reduction Associations’ (CHRAs), non-profit cannabis clubs akin to those seen in Germany, would now be tried in Magistrates Court, rather than by a tribunal.
Effectively, this would see offences upgraded from minor regulatory infractions to formally criminal matters.
”NGO ReLeaf is seeking an urgent meeting over proposed law changes that would, among other things, give the government access to the personal data of all members of cannabis clubs.”#maltahttps://t.co/YTDOriCioi
— Releaf Malta (@Releafmalta) April 8, 2025
According to Buttigieg, these changes reflect the seriousness of organisational regulatory breaches, but won’t impact individual cannabis users, who are still protected under Maltese law.
As such, the Authority for the Responsible Use of Cannabis (ARUC), which currently regulates CHRAs, would be granted new enforcement powers to target commercial shops operating without a licence.
New measures to better differentiate between psychoactive and non-psychoactive cannabis, and prevent intoxicating hemp substances from entering the market undetected, have also been proposed, alongside tighter zoning restrictions for CHRAs.
Releaf Malta, a key advocacy group for Maltese cannabis users, has raised serious concerns about the proposed removal of privacy provisions for club members.
Under the current law, CHRAs must report aggregate data to ARUC, “without giving their personal details.” The proposed revision would remove that clause, effectively giving the government access to individual membership data, a move ReLeaf says increases stigma and undermines the trust built into the system.
The Netherlands launches the next phase of its cannabis experiment
In December 2023, the Netherlands launched the first phase of its highly-anticipated and long-delayed ‘controlled cannabis supply chain experiment’, seeing its famous coffee shops in Breda and Tilburg beginning sales of legally grown cannabis for the first time.
In essence, the experiment is designed to transition the country’s thriving coffee shop industry away from cannabis sourced from the black market towards professionally and legally grown products, amending a decades-old framework where the sale of cannabis was decriminalised but cultivation remained illegal.
The 10 officially licenced growers, named at the end of 2020, have faced numerous hurdles, such as obtaining building permits, finding and retaining investors, and opening bank accounts.
This has meant that the participating retailers, which from July 2024 expanded to the full 10 municipalities, have faced a significant shortage of supply from these legitimate sources.
In response, the government allowed for a ‘transitional’ phase, where legally sourced cannabis could be sold alongside illicitly grown cannabis to ensure demand was met.
This week (April 7), that transition phase ended, meaning the approximately 80 coffee shops can no longer sell any products not sourced from these 10 licenced producers.
One exemption still applies to hash products, however, with producers struggling to fill out their supply chains to adequately meet demand. This exemption is now due to expire in two months.
Czech Republic expands access to medical cannabis
In December 2024, Business of Cannabis reported that a new decree was published by the Czech Ministry of Health, easing restrictions on doctors to prescribe medical cannabis.
This decree officially came into force earlier this month, meaning the country’s approximately 5000 general practitioners can now apply for a licence to prescribe medical cannabis.
Despite being one of the first countries to legalise medical cannabis in 2013, the market has suffered from numerous bottlenecks, including a stipulation that only specialist doctors can prescribe it for a very limited range of conditions, with estimates suggesting just 200 doctors were actively prescribing last year.
While this new decree will help break this severe bottleneck, a number of major barriers to access still apply for patients.
For now, GPs will be restricted to only prescribing cannabis for the management of chronic pain. Furthermore, their ability to apply for a licence does not necessarily mean they will do so.
Lukas Hurt, editor of Konopi Magazine and manager of Czechia’s hemp cluster, CzecHemp, who spoke to Cannabis Health when the decree was passed last year, suggested that there remains a severe lack of education among the medical community, and many GPs, particularly older ones, remain cautious of medical cannabis.
Additionally, physicians are limited in how many medical cannabis patients they can accept, and many specialist practitioners remain unable to prescribe it.
