European Red List of Vascular Plants - European Commission

Convention includes 612 European plant taxa and there is
an overlap of 438 species between the two instruments.
CITES regulates the international trade in endangered
species and is legally binding to its parties. It provides a
framework for countries to establish national legislation
to implement the convention. The trade for all the species
listed in Appendix II should be controlled in the form of
export permits and re-export certificates being required.
For Europe there are only species listed under Appendix
II. This includes all snowdrop species (genus Galanthus)
with a total of seven occurring in Europe of which three
are endemic to the region. The genus Sternbergia has
only two species occurring in Europe: S. colchiciflora and
S. lutea. Furthermore, Adonis vernalis is listed and all
Cyclamen species of which ten occur in Europe. Moreover,
the whole orchid family is included under Appendix II
totalling around 140 European species. The EU Wildlife
Trade Regulation (338/97) lists additional species to
CITES that need management at European level. Only
six species fall outside CITES under this regulation:
Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, Arnica montana, Biarum davisii,
Gentiana lutea, Lycopodium clavatum and Menyanthes
trifoliata.
In total, there are around 950 species in this group
which will be from now on referred to as the “policy
species”. Many of them are listed in more than one policy
instrument and some are also aquatic plants or crop wild
relatives 3 . This report analyses the assessments of 891
species. Unfortunately not all species could be assessed, in
particular information on mainly single country endemics
from the Azores (24 species), Greece (13 species), Spain (8
species), and nine Cyclamen species could not be secured
for this report. There are assessments that were still under
debate at the time of print or have not received feedback
from a reviewer yet. Appendix 2 in this publication
lists all species assessed so far and shows whether they
are included in any of the policy instruments. A few
taxonomic changes have taken place since the Annexes
of the Habitats Directive and Bern Convention were
drawn up and Table 1 shows a list of those species that are
included here under a different name. Other species are not
recognised as distinct species anymore (e.g. Centaurium
Galanthus nivalis is listed under Annex V of the Habitats Directive – all snowdrops are also included in CITES as they are thought after for trade. Photograph © R. Wilford.
3 Species that occur in more than one group are included in the analysis of each of the groups they belong to. A list of all species assessed in this project and
whether they belong to more than one group can be found in Appendix 2 of this document.
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