With biomass staying high in the EU political agenda and most of the recent documents acknowledging that it has the potential to make a very significant contribution to reaching the 20% target [COM, 2008, 2006], the issue of supply in terms of feedstock types, availability constraints and costs in different Member States is set to determine the future technology uptake and market deployment prospects. This paper is based on one of the initial studies, 'Bioenergy's role in the EU market. A view of developments until 2020', and presents a structured review for EU biomass resources, aiming to map technical potentials and provide detailed information on availability, costs and future trends for biomass potentials of different residual feedsctocks in EU27. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.