Deadline: 6-Sep-23
The European Commission (EC) is excited to announce an open call for the protection, maintenance and restoration of the Union’s natural capital in its marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems.
Objectives
Projects should fall under at least one of the two areas of intervention:
- Intervention area: “Space for Nature”
- Any project aimed at improving the condition of species or habitats through areabased conservation or restoration measures falls within the eligible scope of the intervention area “Space for Nature”. This may include, for example, projects for restoring or improving natural or semi-natural habitats, or habitats of species, both within and outside existing protected areas. This may also include projects for creating additional protected areas (or improving the biodiversity focus and contribution of existing protected areas), ecological corridors or other green infrastructure, projects testing or demonstrating new site management approaches, projects acting on pressures, etc.
- Intervention area: “Safeguarding species”
- Any project aimed at improving the condition of species (or, in the case of invasive alien species, reducing their impact) through any relevant activities other than area-based conservation or restoration measures falls within the scope of the intervention area “Safeguarding species”. Considering the broad range of threats that may act on species in addition to the degradation of their habitats, such projects may apply to a wide range of relevant measures, spanning from hard infrastructural works to awareness raising of stakeholders.
Scope
- Activities that can be funded Under both areas of intervention, having clearly defined specific outcome-based biodiversity-related objectives for projects and their activities is a pre-condition for an objective prioritization of the proposals. In order to allow for effective comparison of merits of proposals, the following principles will be applied for a first level prioritisation which defines the urgency under the two areas of intervention:
- For proposals targeting species and habitats covered by the EU Habitats Directive, priority is given to those that are clearly targeting habitats or species in unfavourable and declining conservation status based on the latest Article 17 reports assessments, in particular when their status is unfavourable bad and declining (U2-) both at the EU- and national biogeographical region(s) level, where the project is taking place.
- For the EU 27 Member States, for bird species, and species and habitats not covered by EU Nature legislation, priority is given to proposals clearly targeting those that are in higher extinction risk categories (in particular: endangered or worse). For EU Outermost Regions and Overseas Countries and Territories priority is given to those in higher extinction risk categories (in particular: endangered or worse) in the (Pan) European or Global IUCN red lists respectively.
- Further prioritisation of the proposals will be based on the policy priorities below:
- EU Birds and Habitats Directive
- Invasive Alien Species Regulation
- EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030
- Note: Third countries associated to the LIFE Programme: The assessment of each proposal will be done in line with the provisions of the relevant association agreement.
Funding Information
- The estimated available call budget is EUR 148 400 000.
- Nature and Biodiversity: EUR 145 000 000
Expected impact
- Applicants are expected to define, calculate, explain and achieve the expected impacts as described in the Award criterion ‘Impacts’ in terms of conservation benefit.
- Considering the limited LIFE budget availability, projects requesting high EU contributions (e.g. above 5 M EUR) have to present, in particular, exceptionally clear and convincing evidence of the EU added value of their proposals in terms of impact and value for money. The requested contribution has to be clearly justified by an exceptional impact benefitting urgent conservation needs/priorities. While projects with higher budgets benefit from economies of scale, the applicants need to demonstrate the cost efficiency of their projects and provide detailed cost breakdown in the ‘detailed budget table’ mandatory annex. All LIFE proposals will have to report on their expected outputs and impacts taking into account the LIFE Key Performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs will contribute to evaluating the impact of the LIFE proposal on an environmental but also socio-economic level (e.g. via actions impacting the local economy and population). All the indicators measured should be coherent with the conservation or biodiversity problem addressed and the type of activities planned.
Eligibility Criteria
- In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
- Be legal entities (public or private bodies)
- Be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
- EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs)
- Non-EU countries:
- Listed EEA countries and countries associated to the LIFE Programme or countries which are in ongoing negotiations for an association agreement and where the agreement enters into force before grant signature.
- The coordinator must be established in an eligible country.
- Beneficiaries and affiliated entities must register in the Participant Register — before submitting the proposal — and will have to be validated by the Central Validation Service (REA Validation). For the validation, they will be requested to upload documents showing legal status and origin.
- Other entities may participate in other consortium roles, such as associated partners, subcontractors, third parties giving in-kind contributions, etc.
Specific Cases
- Exceptional funding — Entities from other countries are exceptionally eligible, if the granting authority considers their participation essential for the implementation of the action .
- Natural persons — Natural persons are NOT eligible (with the exception of selfemployed persons, i.e. sole traders, where the company does not have legal personality separate from that of the natural person).
- International organisations — International organisations are eligible. The rules on eligible countries do not apply to them.
- Entities without legal personality — Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees for the protection of the EU financial interests equivalent to that offered by legal persons.
- EU bodies — EU bodies (with the exception of the European Commission Joint Research Centre) can NOT be part of the consortium.
- Associations and interest groupings — Entities composed of members may participate as ‘sole beneficiaries’ or ‘beneficiaries without legal personality’. Please note that if the action will be implemented by the members, they should also participate (either as beneficiaries or as affiliated entities, otherwise their costs will NOT be eligible).
- Countries currently negotiating association agreements — Beneficiaries from countries with ongoing negotiations may participate in the call and can sign grants if the negotiations are concluded before grant signature (with retroactive effect, if provided in the agreement).
For more information, visit European Commission.