Twenty Third seminar of the new Xylella Seminar Series jointly organised by the EU funded Bexyl project, EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) and Auburn University.  Jesus Barreiro-Hurle, from the European Commission Joint Research Centre (Seville, Spain),  gave a presentation titled Evaluating impacts of Union Quarantine pests in the EU’s territory: Xyllela fastidiosa still ranks 1st in the 2025 update of the Priority Pest exercise.   

In its 2019 assessment the European Commission listed Xylella fastidiosa (Xf) as a priority pest. This decision was informed by the impact analysis carried out by the JRC using the Impact Indicator for Priority Pests (I2P2). The I2P2 combines in a linear manner indicators that capture how the establishment of Xf in the Union’s territory would affect the economic, social and environmental domains. During 2025 the JRC in collaboration with EFSA has updated the I2P2 both in terms of data coverage, temporal dimension and indicators used for the environmental domain. In this presentation the process to update the I2P2 ranking will be presented focusing on how the indicator has been constructed and the main changes in the assessment between 2019 and 2025. In both cases Xf has been identified as the pest with the highest overall potential impact, economic impact and social impact. In terms of environmental impact Xf ranks 3rd behind after Listronotus bonaerensis and Popillia Japonica. An interactive dashboard built to visualize the impacts was also presented in this seminar.