Outcome of a public consultation on the draft scientific opinion of the EFSA Scientific Committee on recovery in environmental risk assessments at EFSA

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) carried out a public consultation to receive input from the scientific community and all interested parties on the draft scientific opinion on recovery in environmental risk assessments (ERAs) at EFSA. This draft opinion gathered scientific knowledge on recovery for further development of ERAs and developed a conceptual framework which includes an integrative approach based on well-defined specific protection goals, scientific knowledge derived by means of experimentation, modelling and monitoring, and the selection of focal taxa, communities, processes and landscapes. This draft opinion was prepared by a dedicated working group of the Scientific Committee and endorsed by the Scientific Committee for public consultation at its plenary meeting on 9 June 2015. The consultation was carried out via the web from 22 June 2015 and the draft opinion was published online with an invitation for submission of written comments by 10 September 2015. EFSA received 84 comments from 13 interested parties. The current report presents statistics on the comments received and lists all comments together with detailed answers to them. The submitted comments were considered valuable and were taken into account by the working group when updating the draft scientific opinion on recovery in ERAs at EFSA. EFSA and its Scientific Committee wish to thank all stakeholders for their contributions. The finalised opinion was discussed and adopted at the Scientific Committee plenary meeting on 11 November 2015, and is published in the EFSA Journal.