Nationally designated areas (CDDA)

The Common Database on Designated Areas (CDDA) is more commonly known as Nationally designated areas. The inventory began in 1995 under the CORINE programme of the European Commission. It is now one of the agreed Eionet priority data flows maintained by EEA with support from the European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity. It is a result of an annual data flow through Eionet countries. The EEA publishes the data set and makes it available to the World Database of Protected Areas (WDPA). The CDDA data can also be queried online in the European Nature Information System (EUNIS). This page provides an overview of guidance and reference material for the data flow.

Explanatory notes for the nationally designated marine areas

17 Dec 2013

As part of the preparation of the “Protected Areas in Europe” report in 2012 and an inventory report of European marine protected areas (MPAs) in 2013 (to be published in 2014), EEA discovered a gap in the data contained within the Nationally designated areas database (CDDA). The gap is in regard to the nationally designated marine areas, which seems to be lacking a number of national site designations, especially in off-shore areas.

Marine protected areas under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive

20 Mar 2013

The CDDA 2013 call have additional focus on nationally designated marine areas not otherwise reported under the Natura 2000 Directives or under other international agreements e.g. under the Regional Sea Conventions. The process has been further elaborated in the Commission paper “Marine protected areas under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive” as agreed at the Marine Expert Group meeting on 6th November 2012.

National participants to the EU Marine Expert Group

17 Dec 2013

At the Joint Meeting of the Nature, Marine and Water Directors Meeting of December 2013, Vilnius, the Directors welcomed the initiatives to work together on marine protected areas (MPAs) under both Natura 2000 and the MSFD provisions through a strengthened Marine Expert Group as being the coordinating Working Group for MPAs. This included the further development of joined-up implementation efforts in line with respective legal obligations. The EIONET contact points are therefore encouraged to take contact to the national representatives of the Marine Expert Group in order to coordinate national efforts on MPAs.