Work‐plan and methodology for EFSA to develop plant pest survey guidelines for EU Member States

The European Commission requested EFSA to facilitate the Member States in the planning and execution of their survey activities. In particular, EFSA is asked to provide scientific and technical guidelines in the context of the new plant health regime (Regulation (EU) 2016/2031), in which prevention and risk targeting are given an extra focus, and the European Commission co-financing programme of the annual Member State survey activities for pests of EU relevance (Regulation (EU) No 652/2014). In order to address this mandate EFSA is requested to deliver by the end of 2019: (i) 47 pest survey cards that contain practical information required for preparing survey design; (ii) survey guidelines for 3 different pests that will be case studies to be developed in collaboration with the EU Member States; and, (iii) support to the Member States on the underpinning statistical methods and use of the EFSA WEB-based tools RiBESS+ and SAMPELATOR to inform sampling strategy design, including sample size calculations. This technical report describes the methodological approach and the work-plan EFSA will implement to deliver the requested outputs.