Following a request from the European Commission, the Plant Health ( ) Panel performed a risk assessment for spp. in the focusing on the risk of entry, the host range and the potential impacts. is a fungal pathogen of several spp. in North America. The pathogen has not been reported from Europe and is a quarantine pest regulated in Annex of Council Directive 2000/29/ on plants (other than fruit and seeds), isolated bark and wood of . The main pathways of entry considered were plants, wood and isolated bark. Given the ban of importing plants from outside Europe into the and the lack of information on imports of isolated bark, only the wood pathway was assessed quantitatively. The conclusion of the assessment of entry for scenario A0 (current regulatory situation) is that the risk of entry of spp. is close to zero. This conclusion is expected to apply also in the case of removing the specific regulations, because of the remaining generic requirements, as well as in a scenario with additional risk reduction options. The uncertainty associated with this assessment is relatively limited, given that all the quartiles of the estimated distribution of the number of potential founder populations are close to zero. For the North American spp. known to be susceptible and widely planted in the (mainly and ), the damage observed in North America (loss of wood quality, stem deformations, mortality in young stands, environmental consequences) is expected in the to a similar (or higher) degree, should the pathogen be introduced. Similar impacts are expected on the European spp. known to be host of spp. These include widespread and locally abundant species such as and . There are, however, large uncertainties associated with this impact assessment due to the unknown susceptibility of several other spp. present in Europe. There is a need for research on the susceptibility to spp. of those European spp.
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