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An increasing number of regulatory tools aiming to impose preventive and control actions against invasive species are currently being developed in Europe. Both species prioritization and the choice of best preventive and potential control actions to reduce the risk require robust and transparent riskassessment. Two different generic tools, available from http://ias.biodiversity.be, have recently been developed in Belgium to help decision makers reaching these goals, i.e. a quick screening prioritization process (Harmonia+) and a detailed risk assessment scheme. Both tools may be applied to any non-native organism irrespective its taxonomic affiliation and encompass an evaluation of the probability of organism entry, establishment, spread, and of the potential and magnitude of environmental, economic and social consequences including plant, animal and human health. Harmonia+ is a quick screening tool that may be used for different purposes (D’hondt et al. 2014): (i) the elaboration of priority lists of invasive species that are established or could potentially establish in an area, (ii) the fulfillment of rapid assessment to help conservation managers to prioritize actions when a new non-native organism is found in the wild and (iii) the identification of non-native specieswith the highest priority for in-depth and time consuming risk analyses and (iv) the scoring of probability and magnitude of the different elements included in those risk analyses. The detailed scheme for invasive species risk analysis is based on the recommendations of the international standards for pest risk analysis for organisms of quarantine concern produced by the Secretariat of the International Plant Protection Convention. It follows a process defined by two main stages, i.e. the risk assessment stage itself and the risk management stage, which involves identifying options for reducing the identified risks. This detailed analysis is especially valuable to know whether trade restrictions could be considered as adequate and efficient to reduce the risk. The output of the risk assessments based on these new tools will be presented and discussed for five emerging non-native species in Belgium (water primrose, red swamp crayfish, American bullfrog, sacred ibis and raccoon dog). Different recommendations and priorities for decision making will be provided for the different species based on the outcome of these analyses. Potential uses for the selection of species of EU concern in the framework of the new EC proposal ofRegulation on the prevention and management of the introduction and spread of IAS in Europe will also be discussed. An increasing number of regulatory tools aiming to impose preventive and control actions against invasive species are currently being developed in Europe. Both species prioritization and the choice of best preventive and potential control actions to reduce the risk require robust and transparent riskassessment. Two different generic tools, available from http://ias.biodiversity.be, have recently been developed in Belgium to help decision makers reaching these goals, i.e. a quick screening prioritization process (Harmonia+) and a detailed risk assessment scheme. Both tools may be applied to any non-native organism irrespective its taxonomic affiliation and encompass an evaluation of the probability of organism entry, establishment, spread, and of the potential and magnitude of environmental, economic and social consequences including plant, animal and human health.Harmonia+ is a quick screening tool that may be used for different purposes (D’hondt et al. 2014): (i) the elaboration of priority lists of invasive species that are established or could potentially establish in an area, (ii) the fulfillment of rapid assessment to help conservation managers to prioritize actionswhen a new non-native organism is found in the wild and (iii) the identification of non-native species with the highest priority for in-depth and time consuming risk analyses and (iv) the scoring of probability and magnitude of the different elements included in those risk analyses.The detailed scheme for invasive species risk analysis is based on the recommendations of the international standards for pest risk analysis for organisms of quarantine concern produced by the Secretariat of the International Plant Protection Convention. It follows a process defined by two main stages, i.e. the risk assessment stage itself and the risk management stage, which involves identifying options for reducing the identified risks. This detailed analysis is especially valuable to know whether trade restrictions could be considered as adequate and efficient to reduce the risk.The output of the risk assessments based on these new tools will be presented and discussed for five emerging non-native species in Belgium (water primrose, red swamp crayfish, American bullfrog, sacred ibis and raccoon dog). Different recommendations and priorities for decision making will be provided for the different species based on the outcome of these analyses.Potential uses for the selection of species of EU concern in the framework of the new EC proposal of Regulation on the prevention and management of the introduction and spread of IAS in Europe will also be discussed.

The sooner invasive alien species become tackled during invasion, the more cost-effective measures against them will be. But before such prevention or early eradication measures can take place, it is essential to have first identified those species posing the highest risks. Given the huge and still-increasing number of species that become transported and may become problematic, such a prioritization must allow for a high number of species from different taxonomic groups to be assessed in a relatively short time. For Belgium, Branquart (2007) launched a scheme that allowed for a quick screening of species' capacity to spread and impacts on the environment (ISEIA protocol). Yet, during the years, this scheme was found to unsatisfactorily cover several issues, and the challenge was therefore to refine this scheme further yet retain its simplicity. We therefore constructed Harmonia+, which -compared to its predecessor- is more complete with regard to the invasion stages covered, with the different kinds of impacts included, and with the consideration of pathogens, among other improvements. More specifically, Harmonia+ presents about 30 key questions on a particular organism, the answers of which need to be provided by one or more assessors. These questions refer to the species' risks on (1) introduction, (2) establishment, (3) spread and (4) impacts, the latter of which are further subdivided into impacts on (4a) environmental, (4b) plant, (4c) animal and (4d) human health. The answers are ordinally scaled, and this allows to put the (separate and combined) risks into scores, which in turn, allows to rank species and prioritize actions against them. Harmonia+ has come about through the collaboration of eight Belgian scientific institutes, each providing their expertise on different components of the protocol. A first version was tested by an international panel of risk analysis experts, and later versions have been applied to test cases by national experts as a means of validation (see Branquart et al., this volume). Harmonia+ can be consulted at http://ias.biodiversity.be.