The European Commission DG SANTE requested EFSA in December 2016 to carry out a horizon scanning exercise on emerging plant pests of interest for the European Union territory. To answer this request, EFSA extended the automated monitoring system based on the MEDISYS platform that was set up in collaboration with the JRC in the period 2014-2016. MEDISYS is part of the Europe Media Monitor (EMM) system, fully automatic public health surveillance platform, able to retrieve articles from the internet, categorise them, identify entities (organisations, persons and locations), extract events, cluster articles, and calculate statistics in order to detect emerging threats. Searches are automatically carried out by the system using keywords corresponding to scientific and common names of the pests and associated diseases. The results are collected in monthly newsletters. Articles on pests regulated in the EU, listed by EPPO and more than 500 newly discovered and emerging plant pests are searched by the platform in more than 12,000 media and scientific literature sources from around 200 countries. Xylella fastidiosa is the pest most covered by media. Time series of articles are reported to illustrate the media relevance of certain plant health issues related to this pest. The situations in Italy and Spain have been largely covered by media that also reported news about the outbreaks in France, Portugal and the first findings of the pest in Israel. Many additional information about vectors, subspecies and hosts have also been reported by media. Xylella fastidiosa is also one of the most recurrent pests subject of scientific articles on control measures, surveillance, detection methods and pest epidemiology. Some articles, providing information on new findings, new vectors and new host plants, may be of interest in the context of the regulation of this quarantine pest.

IT; PPT; Caterina.CAMPESE@ext.efsa.europa.eu