Its Foreword (by Karel H Voous) and Preface (by Goetz Rheinwald and Jeremy Greenwood) are followed by an English introduction and shorter introductions in Czech, German, Spanish, French, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Polish, Russian and Swedish; indexes of bird names, in the same languages, are also included, at the end of the book.

The introductions are followed by sections detailing the history of the European Ornithological Atlas project and the Evolution and History of the European Bird Fauna, and a section listing national and major regional published bird atlases.

The book's dustjacket is illustrated by bird artist David Nurney - the front cover shows a common kingfisher (with a map of its distribution), while a European bee-eater is depicted on the spine.

The survey area covered by the project extends to include Madeira, The Azores, Iceland, Svalbard, Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land and Transcaucasia, as well as European Russia east to the Urals.

This publication consisted of maps of projected species distributions based on the predictions of the Hadley centre HadCM3 climate change model.