Report on the methodology applied by EFSA to provide a quantitative assessment of pest-related criteria required to rank candidate priority pests as defined by Regulation (EU) 2016/2031

In agreement with Article 6(2) of the Regulation (EU) 2016/2031 on protective measures against pestsof plants, the European Commission has been tasked by the Council and European Parliament toestablish a list of Union quarantine pests which qualify as priority pests. The prioritisation is based onthe severity of the economic, social and environmental impact that these pests can cause in the Unionterritory. The Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) is in charge of developing a methodologybased on a multi-criteria decision analysis and composite indicators. In this context, EFSA has providedtechnical and scientific data related to these pests, in particular: (i) the potential host range anddistribution of each of these pests in the Union territory at the level of NUTS2 regions; (ii) parametersquantifying the potential consequences of these pests, e.g. crop losses in terms of yield and quality,rate of spread and time to detection. Expert knowledge elicitation methodology has been applied byEFSA in order to provide those parameters in a consistent and transparent manner.