There is no European Union-wide ban on kratom. There is also no lawful way to sell it for human consumption anywhere in the bloc. Both statements are true at once, and the gap between them explains most of the confusion about kratom’s status in Europe.
Kratom is not controlled at EU level
Kratom (Mitragyna speciosa) is not subject to EU-wide drug control. The European Union Drugs Agency maintains a drug profile on it, but a profile is a monitoring document, not a control measure.
Control is therefore a matter for national law, and national law varies more widely on kratom than on almost any other substance in Europe. It is banned outright in some member states, legal but unapproved for consumption in others, and available from licensed shops in the Netherlands. A reader’s legal position depends entirely on where they are standing.
The novel food problem
The more important constraint is not drug law at all. It is food law.
Under Regulation (EU) 2015/2283, any food without a significant history of human consumption within the EU before 15 May 1997 is a “novel food,” and may not be placed on the market until it is authorised. That definition is in Article 3(2)(a). The prohibition itself is in Article 6(2), which says that only novel foods “authorised and included in the Union list may be placed on the market within the Union as such, or used in or on foods”.
Two Commission lists follow from that. They do different jobs, and confusing them is what this page had wrong until 31 August 2026.
The catalogue does not mention kratom, and that changes nothing
The Novel Food status Catalogue is the Commission’s public index of whether a given product is likely to need an authorisation. Until 31 August 2026 this page said the catalogue lists Mitragyna speciosa. It does not.
We read all 970 published entries on 31 August 2026 and searched them for Mitragyna, speciosa, kratom, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine. There is no entry under any of those names. Under M the list runs from Mineral enriched fungal biomass straight to Momordica charantia, and nothing sits between them. The list did render: Ginkgo biloba, Stevia rebaudiana, Hoodia gordonii and Cannabis sativa L. are all in the same response.
An absent entry is not a permission, and the Commission says so itself. The catalogue’s own notice calls it “a non-binding tool” built “based on information provided by the EU Member States”, adds that “it is a non-exhaustive list and serves as orientation”, and then puts the burden where it actually sits:
It is up to the Food Business Operator, when placing products on the market, to be able to prove a history of consumption as foodstuff before 15 May 1997.
That sentence decides the question. Nobody has to prove kratom is a novel food. A seller has to prove it is not, by showing significant food use in the Union before 15 May 1997, and kratom has no such record in Europe. Other well-known plants are absent from the catalogue in exactly the same way, kava, khat and iboga among them, which is what a non-exhaustive list looks like rather than a set of decisions.
The binding list is the Union list, and kratom is not on it
The list with legal force is the Union list of authorised novel foods, the annex to Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/2470. Article 6(2) refers to that list and to no other.
We read the consolidated text in force from 10 August 2026, which incorporates every amendment up to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1749 of 20 July 2026. Kratom, Mitragyna speciosa and mitragynine appear nowhere in it.
The same two checks apply here. The annex rendered: astaxanthin-rich oleoresin, bovine lactoferrin and Schizochytrium sp. oil are all in the text we read. And the text is current rather than an old copy: it carries pasteurised Akkermansia muciniphila, defatted rapeseed powder, inulin-propionate ester and Rhizomucor pusillus mycelium, all authorised or amended during 2026.
No novel food authorisation for kratom has ever been granted. That is the finding this page rests on, and it is the one part of this section the correction left standing.
The consequence is straightforward, and it catches out sellers who assume that “not banned” means “legal to sell”: in a member state where kratom is not a controlled substance, selling it as a food or supplement, for human consumption, is still unlawful. Not because of drug law, but because it is an unauthorised novel food.
This is why European kratom is so often sold with conspicuous “not for human consumption” labelling, or as incense, or as a botanical specimen. That labelling is a legal manoeuvre, not a description of what the product is for.
What the EFSA Journal assessment found
In 2022 the EFSA Journal published an assessment of the health risks of botanical kratom preparations. It is worth being exact about what that is. The report comes from the European Food Risk Assessment Fellowship Programme, which EFSA runs, and its authors are at Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment. It is not a scientific opinion of an EFSA panel, and we do not present it as one.
It concluded that kratom consumption has the potential to lead to adverse neurological effects, including addiction and withdrawal syndrome, and to elicit distinct organ toxicity, naming the liver and the kidney as target organs.
It also found that risk characterisation is impeded by considerable uncertainties: the composition of kratom preparations varies, information on dose-response relationships is insufficient, and data on the effects of long-term use are limited. The authors write that those gaps do not currently allow health-based guidance values to be derived for kratom. That finding deserves to be reported honestly, because it is routinely misrepresented in both directions: kratom’s promoters cite the data gaps as evidence of safety, and its opponents cite the adverse findings as if the picture were settled. Neither is what the assessment says. The honest summary is that there are real documented harms, and that the evidence base remains too thin to quantify them properly.
What this means in practice
- There is no EU-wide ban. Anyone telling you kratom is “illegal in Europe” is wrong.
- There is no EU-wide permission either. Anyone telling you it is “legal in Europe” is also wrong, and is usually selling something.
- Your national law is what governs you. In several member states, possession is a criminal matter.
- Selling it as food is unlawful across the EU, authorisation having never been granted, regardless of national drug law.
Country-by-country
We are building individual pages for each European jurisdiction, each citing that country’s own legislation rather than a secondary summary. Those will be linked here as they are published.
We are deliberately not publishing a summary table before that work is done. Kratom’s legal status is exactly the kind of information where a confident, unsourced, out-of-date answer can put someone in front of a magistrate. The internet has plenty of those already.