Art 17 Reporting 2001-2006

These pages give access to assessments of conservation status of habitats and species as well as other information reported by the Member States.

The European Commission adopted the Composite report on Article 17 on July 13th 2009. You can find the composite report here. For more information on the composite report visit the relevant European Commission website.

1. Overview of the Article 17 reporting

The Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC), together with the Birds Directive (79/409/EEC), is the most important European legislation aimed at the conservation of the European Union’s wildlife. The Directive is presented as a series of articles together with a number of annexes. Article 11 requires Member States to monitor the habitats and species listed in the annexes and Article 17 requires a report to be sent to the European Commission every 6 years following an agreed format – hence ‘Article 17 reporting’.

The Article 17 report presented on these pages covers the period from 2001 to 2006. A major part of the report is an assessment of the conservation status of all the habitats and species listed on:

  • Annexes I & II of the Directive (those for which the Member States must propose & designate sites forming part of the Natura 2000 network and known as ‘Special Areas of Conservation)
  • Annex IV (species strictly protected)
  • Annex V (species whose exploitation may be subject to management).

The Article 17 reporting covers the habitat types and species in the whole territory of the Member State concerned, not only those within Natura 2000 sites. As this reporting period was until 2006 it does not cover Bulgaria and Romania, which joined the EU on January 1st 2007.

For more details:

BIOGEOGRAPHICAL & MARINE REGIONS


The conservation status of each habitat type and species either at the Member State or at the EU 25 level was assessed separately for each biogeographical region in which it occurs. For the assessment of marine habitat types and species four marine regions were used. The marine regions were created specifically for the Article 17 reporting.

2. Data quality and completeness

The methodology for assessing conservation status used for Article 17 reporting requires a variety of data. Ideally these data would have been collected during the reporting period (2001-2006) using compatible methods in each Member State but this was unrealistic. In reality Member States have mostly used data collected for other purposes (often related to national data requirements including site management) and over varied time periods. In many instances suitable data does not exist. The guidance document produced to help the Member States encourages the use of expert opinion where data is not available but in many cases data was not reported and parameters or overall assessments were reported as 'unknown'. Even when data are available there are often problems arising from differing means of presenting the data or the way in which it has been collected.

A summary report was produced by the ETC/BD demonstrating the problems with missing or ‘unknown’ data and including statistics on data completeness, quality and coherence:

The Member State reports were checked by the European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity (ETC/BD) and quality control reports produced. This enabled many data problems to be corrected prior to further analysis.

3. Biogeographical assessments from the Member States

The Article 17 report covering the period 2001-2006 was submitted by the Member States in 2007. The Article 17 reports from the Member States comprise of a general part as well as separate reports for each of the habitat types and species of Community interest. The habitat and species reports assess the conservation status using a standard methodology which was to facilitate aggregation and comparisons between Member States and biogeographical regions. The concept of 'conservation status' is central to the Habitats Directive and one of the primary objectives of the Habitats Directive is to maintain at, or restore at favourable conservation status the habitat types and species listed in its Annexes. Conservation status has been assessed as being either ‘favourable’, ‘unfavourable-inadequate’ and ‘unfavourable-bad’, based on four parameters as defined in Article 1 of the Directive.

A summary report was produced by the ETC/BD explaining where to find the agreed reporting format, individual reports by each Member State and the principles how the data was used to produce national summaries and checklists.

The biogeographical assessments for both habitat types and species at Member State level can be viewed using the web tool via the following links:

National Summaries

The information submitted by the Member States was summarised by the ETC/BD to produce the National Summaries. A National Summary is a document containing basic statistics and an overview of the main results from the Member State’s Article 17 report which covered the period from 2001 to 2006. Beside the assessment of the conservation status, the Article 17 report has for the first time provided the comprehensive list of the habitat types/species of Community interest present in the biogeographical regions of the particular Member States. This information is compiled in the Reporting Checklist.

An explanatory note is available on what kind of data is provided in national summaries.

National summaries and checklists can be viewed here:

4. Biogeographical assessments at the EU 25 level

Article 17(2) of the Habitats Directive requires the European Commission to prepare a composite report based on the Member States reports. One of the elements of this composite report is an assessment of conservation status of habitat types and species of Community interest at the biogeographical level. The biogeographical assessments of conservation status was made by the European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity (ETC/BD) based on the data and assessments reported by the Member States. The methods of the biogeographical assessment were developed in close cooperation with experts of the Scientific Working Group under the Habitats Committee.

The methods used to obtain the European biogeographical assessment are described in the following document:

Some basic statistics and an overview of the main results from the Article 17 report at the European level can be consulted in the following documents:

An overview of the conservation status in pdf format can be viewed here:

The biogeographical assessments for both habitat types and species at the EU 25 level can be viewed using the web tool via the following links:

Public Consultation

The assessments of conservation status, both by countries and for the biogeographical and marine regions, were open for a public consultation from 28 July until 15 September 2008. After this consultation period the ETC/BD revised the biogeographical assessments.

For more details:

Additional information

Additional information on conservation status:

Additional information on trends:

Additional information on future prospects:

5. Species conservation

Listing species in the Annex IV means that the Member States are obliged to establish a regime of strict protection for these species. Furthermore for Annex IV species the Member States are obliged to ensure that other activities will not lead to incidental killing or taking of specimens. Wild populations of the species listed in the Annex V can be exploited, but the exploitation may be regulated. Besides the assessment of the conservation status of the habitat types and species of the Community interest, the Article 17 report includes information on the principal conservation measures applied in the Member State under the Habitats Directive including the measures of the species protection for the species listed in Annex IV and V. This information is compiled in the General part of the Article 17 report.

Overview of the measures of the species conservation can be consulted via the following links:

6. The Natura 2000 network

Member States are required to propose, and if accepted by the procedure described in the Habitats Directive, designate sites to protect the habitat types listed in Annex I and the species listed in Annex II. These sites are known as Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) and together with Special Protection Areas (SPA), designated under the Birds Directive, form the Natura 2000 network. The candidate SAC’s proposed by the Member States to the Commission are referred to as the Sites of Community Importance (SCI).

Site protection is one of the main tools that the Directive applies in order to maintain and restore at a favourable conservation status the habitat types and species of Community interest. To make the site protection function the Member States shall, for SACs, establish a system of conservation measures and take appropriate steps to avoid the destruction of the habitat types and of the habitats of the species and disturbing of the species.

Information on the status and the designation of the SCIs/SACs at the end of the reporting period (i.e. 2006) can be consulted via the following links:

An overview of the conservation measures and the measures to avoid the deterioration of the habitat types and the habitats of the species can be consulted via the following links:

7. National Publications

Several Member States have published reports on their national Article 17 assessments.

8. Concluding Remarks

The Article 17 report is the first time the conservation status of the European Union’s most endangered habitats and species have been assessed using a standard methodology. Geographical information on the distribution of the habitats and species within the EU 25 was compiled as part of this process.

The results of the Article 17 report clearly show that most habitat types and species of Community interest are not considered to have a favourable conservation status. For many of these habitat and species, conservation action is already underway, the Article 17 report will help identify other habitat types and species which require action. A large number of habitat types and particularly species were reported as 'unknown' by one or more Member States which has often led to regional assessments as 'unknown'. This was especially the case for the marine habitat types and species.

Although explanatory notes and guidelines were prepared to guide the Member States, it is clear that there has been variation in how they have been interpreted by the Member States and to obtain the objective picture at the EU scale further harmonisation of the techniques is required.

Principle conclusions on the conservation status of habitat types and species in EU 25:

  • For the first time the conservation status of the EU’s most endangered habitat types and species have been assessed using a standard methodology.
  • Most habitat types and species of Community interest are not considered to have a favourable conservation status.
  • The Alpine region has the highest proportion of habitat types assessed as ‘favourable’ and the Atlantic the lowest.
  • The Boreal region has the highest proportion of species assessed as ‘favourable’ and the Continental the lowest.
  • Dunes, bogs and grasslands are the habitat groups with the worst conservation status.
  • Habitat types associated with agriculture are particularly in need of conservation action.
  • Wetlands and dunes may already be affected by climate change.
  • A large number of 'unknown's, especially in southern Europe.
  • Better coordination between the Member States is required.
  • Better knowledge is required for the Marine Environment.

A report of selected highlights can be found here:

The European Commission have produced a leaflet summarising the Composite report. It can be viewed here.

9. Download of data and summary sheets

Data relating to Article 17 is available to download at the EEA dataservice Click here to go to the dataservice page.

The descriptive data is available as a zipped MS Access file called "art17_database_2008".For a quick overview of the attribute information of the database click here.

The GIS data consists of 2 zipped shapefiles of the distribution of habitat types and species, called "Article17_Habitats_Distribution" and "Article17_Species_Distribution" respectively. Please note that the GIS files have been gridded to 10km grids (or equivalent) due to the heterogeneity of the data sets received. The projection is ETRS LAEA 5210 and the coverage is the EU 25. For a quick overview of the attribute information of the spatial data click here.

For Terms of use click here..

Summary sheets, presenting an overview of the conservation status across the EU25 and Member States, were produced for all of the habitat types and species. They can be viewed and downloaded from the following links.

Habitat types:

Species:

Acknowledgements

The reporting format was developed by the ETC/BD and DG Environment together with the Member States. Technical support was provided by the EEA.

The assessments rely on data collected by hundreds, if not thousands of individuals, many of them volunteers. This report would not have been possible without their work.

Quick links for the impatient

Biogeographical assessments at Member State level:

Biogeographical assessments at EU 25 level: