The Common Database on Designated Areas (CDDA) was created in 2014 by Cogea for the European Marine Observation and Data Network. It is entirely based on GIS Data from the European Environmental Agency's (EEA), plus selected EEA tabular data joined to the feature attributes, as well as a calculation by Cogea of marine and coastal location of features.The CDDA is commonly known as ‘Nationally designated areas’. The inventory began in 1995 under the CORINE programme of the European Commission. It is now one of the agreed Eionet priority data flows maintained by the EEA with support from the European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity. It is the result of an annual data flow through Eionet countries. The EEA publishes the dataset and makes it available to the World Database of Protected Areas (WDPA). CDDA data can also be queried online in the European Nature Information System (EUNIS).The whole dataset is available for download on the EMODnet Human Activities portal. In the webmap the EEA dataset has been filtered by Cogea to show only (i) marine areas, i.e. areas with a “marine percentage” higher than 0 and/or a marine "ecotype" (as calculated or reported by the EEA) to and (ii) areas that – even if not identified as marine by the EEA –intersect the EEA coastline or that are within a distance of 1 km from the coastline (using a 1 km inner buffer from the EEA coastline). In both cases the COAST_MAR field value=1. The EEA coastline dataset is available at https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/eea-coastline-for-analysis-1.The latest version of the CDDA (version 15 from 2017) covers the entire geographical area of the 33 EEA member countries and its six cooperating countries. It includes the full geographical area under the responsibility of European countries as well as other States and Territories related to key initiatives in the European region. The resulting data covers the 39 countries as well as Greenland (Denmark) and the French Overseas Departments and Territories and Overseas Collectives. Geographical coverage of GIS vector boundary data is: Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo under UNSC Resolution 1244/99, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Malta, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom. EEA does not have permission to distribute some or all sites reported by Estonia, Ireland, Romania and Turkey.Compared with the previous version, this version includes the update 'CDDA v15', published by the EEA in 2018; a new field has been added, reporting the major ecosystem type code.For further information please visit the EEA's website.