The use of Mg alloys as biodegradable implants requires optimizing the surface performance. A high number of surface modification and coating approaches have been previously explored, for instance to make magnesium and its alloys more corrosion resistant. The current study focuses on developing surface pre-treatments as a corrosion protection and primer for further surface modifications by electrophoretic deposition (EPD) of bioadaptive chitosan-bioactive glass coatings. For this, different surface treatments were tested on a WE43 Mg alloy. These treatments include immersion in Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's Medium (DMEM), a calcium phosphate treatment, immersion in hydrofluoric acid, and a hydrothermal procedure in NaOH. The resulting coatings were analyzed in view of the surface morphology and composition by SEM/EDX, as well as in view of their short-term corrosion protection ability by electrochemistry. Finally, the suitability of the different pre-treatments as an interfacial protection layer for subsequent EPD of a chitosan/bioactive glass-coating was explored. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V.