The European inventory of Nationally designated areas (CDDA) holds information about designated areas and their designation types, which directly or indirectly create protected areas. The data is delivered by the Eionet partnership countries as spatial and tabular information.

The inventory began in 1995 under the CORINE programme of the European Commission. The CDDA is now an agreed annual Eionet core data flow maintained by the European Environment Agency (EEA) with support from the European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity (ETC/BD). The dataset is used by the EEA and e.g. the UNEP-WCMC for their main European and global assessments, products and services.

The CDDA is the official source of protected area information from the 38 European* countries to the World Database of Protected Areas (WDPA). Following the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU on 31 January 2020, it ceased to be part of the EEA’s institutional networks and governance. The CDDA data can be queried online in the European Nature Information System (EUNIS).

This metadata refers to the public version of the CDDA dataset version 19 (2021). The internal version of this dataset "Nationally designated areas (CDDA) for internal use - version 19, Jun. 2021", from which is derived from this dataset, contains all designated areas and its access is restricted. EEA does not have permission to distribute some or all sites reported by Estonia, Ireland and Türkiye.

Two versions of the dataset are provided. The full dataset ("CDDA_2021_v01_public") includes the entire geographical coverage including nationally designated areas in overseas entities. The "CDDA_2021_v01_public_EuropeEPSG3035" version includes only continental Europe, i.e. excludes the overseas entities. Both versions are provided in GDB and GPKG formats.

The dataset is accompanied by the following tabular data: CDDA_2021_v01_public_DesignatedArea.csv, which includes information on the nationally designated sites and designated boundaries for public dissemination; and CDDA_2021_v01_public_DesignationType.csv, which contains information about designation types and the national and international legislative instruments, which directly or indirectly create protected designated areas in Europe.

* Including Kosovo (UNSCR 1244/99), which designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo Declaration of Independence.