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Invasive alien species (IAS) constitute a trans‐ and intracontinental challenge. With this article, we exemplify obstacles met during the implementation of the Regulation (EU) No. 1143/2014 against IAS and comparatively assess them through two case studies from two Member States, Austria and Romania, via qualitative content analysis. Challenges are identified, analyzed, and discussed based on interviews with stakeholders from both countries in the view of the three main intervention types within this Regulation: prevention, early detection, and rapid eradication and management. The obstacles, which the two Member States met, are related to creating, updating, and maintaining the Union List and to the distribution of competences, which influence the national and subnational cooperation and coordination. Financial resources, custom controls, national legislation, and awareness influence the implementation of the IAS Regulation too. This research contributes to improving knowledge about numerous details of the implementation and enforcement of this IAS‐Regulation to make them more feasible, not just for scientists, but also for decision‐ and policymakers, business owners, and other stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Spanish slug ( Arion vulgaris, also known as A. lusitanicus ) is considered one of the most invasive species in agriculture, horticulture and private gardens all over Europe. Although this slug has been problematic for decades, there is still not much known about its occurrence across private gardens and the underlying meteorological and ecological factors. One reason for this knowledge gap is the limited access of researchers to private gardens. Here we used a citizen science approach to overcome this obstacle and examined whether the occurrence of Arionidae in Austrian gardens was associated with meteorological (air temperature, precipitation, global solar radiation, relative humidity) or ecological factors (plant diversity, earthworm activity). Occurrence of the invasive A. vulgaris versus the similar-looking native A. rufus was compared using a DNA-barcoding approach. Results: Slugs were collected from 1061 gardens from the dry Pannonian lowland to the wet alpine climate (altitudinal range 742 m). Slug abundance in gardens was best explained and negatively associated with the parameters "sum of the mean air temperature in spring", "number of frost days in the previous winter" and "mean daily global solar radiation on the day of data collection". Precipitation, plant diversity and earthworm activity were also related to slug abundance, but positively. Out of our genetic sampling of collected slugs, 92% belonged to A. vulgaris. Conclusions: Our study showed that citizen science (i) is a feasible approach to record species occurrence in restricted areas across a wide geographical range and (ii) could be more widely employed in order to identify underlying environmental factors of species occurrence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]