EFSA methodology for assessing candidate priority pests under EU Regulation 2016/2031

In 2022, EFSA was mandated by the European Commission's Directorate‐General for Health and Food Safety (M‐2022‐00070) to provide technical assistance on the list of Union quarantine pests qualifying as priority pests, as specified in Article 6(2) of Regulation (EU) 2016/2031 on protective measures against plant pests. As part of Task C, EFSA conducted comprehensive expert knowledge elicitations for 46 candidate priority pests, focusing on the lag period, rate of expansion and impact on production (yield and quality losses) and the environment. This report details the methodology for assessing these candidate priority pests for which the EFSA outputs and supporting datasets were delivered to the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, to feed the Impact Indicator for Priority Pest (I2P2) model and complete the pest prioritisation ranking exercise.