LIFE 2021 Capacity Building

Topic description

Objective:

In line with article 11(4) of the LIFE Regulation (EU) 2021/783, technical assistance projects for capacity building aim at

supporting national level public bodies responsible for implementation of LIFE to improve their Member State effective participation in the Programme and increasing the quality of submitted proposals, through specific needs based activities.

Only national level public bodies responsible for implementation of LIFE in an eligible Member State in the European Union may apply for capacity-building projects. Project consortium may include additional entities provided that their participation is justified by the project objectives and their role is clearly defined. In principle, the project should be coordinated by public bodies responsible for implementation of LIFE.

The actions included in proposals for capacity-building projects must take place primarily within the territory of the Member State of the main applicant.

Each proposal should be based on a needs analysis. Such analysis should identify:

• the reasons for low effective participation to LIFE programme
• types of applicants (public organisations, private entities and civil society organisations) that struggle to access LIFE funding in a given Member State (and reasons for that)
• types of LIFE projects that are underused in a given Member State (and reasons for that).

Based on this needs assessment the applicants should identify the most effective activities addressing the low participation and/or the ineffective participation rate of different types of applicants (public organisations, private entities and civil society organisations) in the LIFE Programme. Eligible activities are the following:

• implementation actions such as training activities, targeted information campaigns

In particular:

1. targeted and tailored made communication campaigns on the LIFE Programme should be addressed, among others, to public national and local authorities responsible for the implementation of environmental and climate action policies and plans at all levels and across the entire national territory (e.g. municipalities, provinces, environment protection agencies, ecological operational units responsible for the enforcement of national environmental laws, public research institutes, academia)
2. tailored made workshops on writing solid proposals; actions supporting replication/ transfer of LIFE projects results; helping applicants to build (transnational) consortia; trainings on the use and monitoring of key performance indicators, etc.

• Screening of national environmental and climate actions priorities to support, through LIFE projects, the development, implementation, monitoring and enforcement of relevant Union legislations,
• Actions aimed at increasing the participation of those types of applicants that struggle to access LIFE funding in a given Member State (e.g. public organisations, private entities, civil society organisations) as identified in the needs assessment,
• Actions aimed at increasing the use of certain types of LIFE projects. In particular, in the context of increasing use of SIPs and SNAPs in a given Member State, CAP project may include actions reinforcing the mainstreaming of environmental and climate actions into other sectors, enhancing synergies between LIFE and other EU funds, supporting use of cumulative financing from other Union programmes or private sector,
• Procurement of external experts to address ad-hoc gaps in technical and process capability and in particular to provide advice and support in the preparation of a proposal,^[1]
• Gap analysis and assessment of policy uptake of LIFE project results,
• Actions for project management and quality control.

The Commission expects that the budget will be proportionate to the activities that will be implemented under each project to address the low and/or ineffective participation rate of the different types of applicants.

An increase of the effective participation and the quality of the proposals by the Member State currently registering low and/or ineffective participation rate.

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