Since its beginning in 1993, FOCUS (FOrum for the Co-ordination of pesticide fate models and their USe) has established a number of work groups to develop procedures for estimating concentrations of plant protection products and their metabolites in various environmental compartments (ground water, surface water, soil, sediment, and air). One of the most important parameters in these environmental assessments is the degradation of these compounds. Although the procedures for conducting the laboratory and field studies measuring degradation are specified in study guidelines, the procedures for calculating degradation rates have not been standardised. The general procedures for calculating degradation rates are well known but the assumptions made during this process can appreciably affect the results. Therefore FOCUS established a work group of experts from regulatory authorities, research institutes, and industry to develop recommendations for calculating degradation kinetics in the EU registration process. This FOCUS group met nine times between September 2002 and January 2005, carefully considered the comments of the member states to an initial draft of its findings, and prepared version 1.0 of this report in In response to the comments made by the EFSA PPR Panel, the FOCUS Steering Committee (SC) asked the work group to produce this final version (version 2.0) of the report.The SC reacts to the recommendations by the Panel as follows:(1a) This chapter was not part of the remit of this work group and would lead to a considerable delay in the finalisation of this guidance document which the SC considers undesirable. Therefore the SC decided not to follow this recommendation.However, new Section 11.5 was added to the guidance document that gives some reflections on this matter. (4) Several companies have taken the initiative to develop such software, which is expected to become available in 2006. However, the guidance described in the report has been designed to be generally applicable, independent of specific software tools.(5) The SC agrees that reviewing such experiences is necessary. However, the first step is to collect and report these experiences systematically. The SC cannot commit a FOCUS work group to this task because such experiences are gained in the EU risk assessment procedure co-ordinated by the EFSA PRAPeR team. The SC suggests therefore that this team collects and reports these experiences.The calculation of kinetic parameters is a fundamental component of environmental risk assessments of plant protection products. The recommendations of this report can and will impact the evaluation process. These impacts include more complex evaluation processes, more detailed documentation of calculations, and potentially the need to conduct additional experimental studies. Therefore, the FOCUS Steering Committee recommends the following Page 5 phased approach to the introduction of the recommendations: All regulatory studies that include estimation of degradation kinetics completed later than nine months a...