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Expert reports, presented as part of the permit application, should consider bat protection issues during the planning process of a wind power project. Therefore, several German states agreed on methodological guidelines. However, it is unknown to what extent these guidelines have been applied so far. The study compares the quality of 156 expert reports on bats from six German federal states based on a minimum standard instruction extracted from all guidelines. Is was investigated whether or not the existence of a methodological instruction influenced the quality of expert reports, and how far their quality depended on regional factors (or the federal state) and the year of conduction. On average, expert reports have met 78 % (ranging between 19 and 96 %) of the methodological requirements. However, significant differences in quality between reports from different federal states became obvious. In particular the evaluation of the conflicts showed a high variation. Whilst the results revealed a positive effect of the methodological guidelines on the quality of the reports in general, an improvement of their quality between 2005 and 2013 cannot be confirmed. An average degree of compliance of 80% of the criteria is not acceptable, with particular deficits in the evaluation of conflicts. In conclusion, the study requires an urgent revision of methodological standards, quality management and quality assurance of bat expert reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]