All of IUCN's Red Listing processes rely on the willingness of experts to contribute and pool their collective knowledge to make the most reliable estimates of species status. Without their enthusiastic commitment to species conservation, this kind of regional overview would not be possible.

Coordination of the European Red List of Vascular Plants was carried out by Melanie Bilz (IUCN Global Species Programme). Shelagh Kell and Nigel Maxted (University of Birmingham; IUCN Crop Wild Relative Specialist Group) coordinated the selection, data collection and assessments of the European crop wild relatives while Richard Lansdown (Ardeola Environmental Services) coordinated the compilation of data and the assessments of European aquatic plants. Hassan Rankou and Mike Fay (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; IUCN Orchid Specialist Group) carried out the assessments of all European orchids. Ana Nieto was central to this project as she provided support and guidance on finance, facilitiation, data editing, review, maps, and fundraising. She also organized the two evaluation workshops.

Annabelle Cuttelod, Helen Temple, Craig Hilton-Taylor and Jean-Christophe Vié provided guidance, encouragement, and good advice throughout the project. Teresa Oliveros Martinez, Anna Rosenberg, Maureen Martindell, Amy Burden and Hugo Ruiz Lozano assisted substantially with financial management of the project. Vineet Katariya, Adrian Hughes, Yichuan Shi, and Jim Ragle provided high-quality support on GIS and database issues.

For the organisation and hosting of the workshop on crop wild relatives in Cascais (Portugal) in April 2010 and for the financial support we would like to thank Cascais Natura and Cascais City Council. For the organisation and hosting of the workshop on policy species in Brest (France) in June 2010, we would like to thank the Conservatoire Botanique National de Brest. Our hosts arranged for effective working environments in beautiful surroundings and we enjoyed their warm hospitality. For facilitation at the workshop we would like to thank Annabelle Cuttelod, Ana Nieto, Leah Collett, Maiko Lutz, Amy Burden, and Maria Dolores Peraza Zurita.

This project had the help of many volunteers who dedicated their time to edit and review assessments and to create maps. For the policy plants and aquatic plant species we would like to thank Maria Dolores Peraza Zurita, Diego Juffe Bignoli, Yichuan Shi, Pip Goodwin, Rebecca Catford, Joe Wood, Jennifer Love, Pramod Lamsal, Joe Osborne, and Thomas Nott. For the crop wild relative species, we extend our gratitude to staff and students Joana Magos Brehm, Serene Hargreaves, Joe Osborne, and Hannah Fielder.

For advice on the species selection we would like to thank Jane Smart, Hugh Synge, Elizabeth Radford and the Planta Europa Steering Committee. For the provision of substantial data sets we would like to thank Werner Greuter, Eckhard Raab-Straube and Anton Guentsch (The Botanic Garden Berlin-Dahlem, Germany), Helmut Knüpffer (The Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Germany), John Wiersema and Stephanie Greene (The United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, USA), Suzanne Sharrock and Meirion Jones (Botanic Gardens Conservation International), Milko Skofic (Bioversity International), Graham French (Joint Nature Conservation Committee, UK), José M. Iriondo (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain), Mauricio Parra-Quijano (Centre of Plant Genetic Resources of Spain and Universidad Polytechnica de Madrid, Spain), Samantha Dobbie (University of Birmingham, UK), Doug Evans and Dominique Richard (European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, France), and Stephane Buord and Jean Yves Lesouëf (Conservatoire Botanique National de Brest, France). We would like to thank the project Atlas de Flora Amenazada by the Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, y Medio Rural y Marino, and Sociedad Española de Biología de la Conservación de Plantas, Spain, for access to their national red list information, data, maps and images.

Many of the experts that contributed to this project are members of an IUCN/SSC Specialist Group (SG) and we would like to thank the chairs and Red List Authorities of those groups for mobilising their network and for supporting this project: Arctic Plant SG, Conifer SG, Crop Wild Relative SG, Global Tree SG, Macaronesian Island Plant SG, Mediterranean Island Plant SG, Medicinal Plants SG and Orchid SG.

Data were provided by many experts throughout Europe and we would like to thank in particular the following people for their major contribution to this project (in alphabetical order by family name – we apologize if we have inadvertently missed anyone):

We are very grateful for the contributions of several members of the Societa Botanica Italiana and the Conservatoires Botaniques Nationaux in France that are not named above.