Projects on Legislative and Policy Priorities in the fields of Nature & Biodiversity and Circular Economy & Quality of Life
LIFE 2026 call funds projects addressing EU environmental legislative and policy priorities in nature, biodiversity, and circular economy.
This call supports projects that help develop and implement EU environmental policies and laws. It focuses on nature, biodiversity, and circular economy priorities identified annually with Member States. Projects should address specific needs like digitising impact assessments, forest preservation, polymer analysis, marine pollution, and capacity-building in certain countries.
Likely relevant for
- Environmental NGOs
- Research institutions in environmental science
- Policy advocacy groups
- Public authorities in environment and climate sectors
- Consultants in environmental compliance
Project signals
What it funds
- Projects supporting development and implementation of EU environment and climate policy and legislation
- Actions addressing specific annual priorities identified with Member States
- Activities such as digitising environmental impact assessments, forest preservation, polymer analysis, marine pollution reduction, and capacity-building
Expected outcomes
- Improved implementation of EU environmental legislation
- Enhanced capacity of authorities in targeted countries
- Increased awareness and mapping of critical natural habitats
- Better control of recycled vs virgin polymers at customs
- Reduced marine pollution from ship exhaust gas cleaning systems
Who can apply / participate
- Public authorities
- Research organisations
- Non-governmental organisations
- Private entities with relevant expertise
- Consortia may be formed but single-stage submission model applies
- Eligible countries as per section 6 of call document
- Specific capacity-building priorities target Montenegro and Moldova
- Applicants must meet conditions in section 6 of call document
- Proposals must address one or more specified priorities
- Exact eligible countries list must be verified in call document
- Consortium composition rules require checking
Must check before shortlisting
- Eligibility criteria in section 6 of call document
- Specific priority relevance and scope in section 2 of call document
- Budget availability and funding conditions
Money
Total budget for this call is approximately €13.5 million for 2026 under LIFE Project Grants for nature and environment priorities.
- Total budget for LIFE-2026-PLP-NAT-ENV — 13500000EURBudget allocated for 2026 only
Application notes
- Single-stage submission model applies for this call.
- Proposal page limits and layout as per section 5 of call document
- Eligibility conditions in section 6 of call document
- Financial and operational capacity requirements in section 7
- Evaluation criteria and process in sections 8 and 9
- Legal and financial set-up in section 10
- Mandatory and optional annexes specified in call document
- Prepare proposal following application form templates and guidelines
- Consult FAQs and National Contact Points for support
- Submit proposal via Funding & Tenders Portal before deadline
- Include detailed budget and participant information annexes
- Consider adding NCP as contact person in application
- Check updated eligibility for capacity-building priority (Moldova included, North Macedonia excluded)
- Carefully read all call document sections before applying
- Ensure compliance with all admissibility and eligibility criteria
Derived from official EU Funding portal source · updated 22 Jun 2026, 17:15 UTC. Use this as a shortlisting aid; the official call text remains authoritative.
Related calls
These funding calls are closely related and may be worth considering as part of the same funding landscape.
Official source text
Fine print from the EU source record. Expand when you need the original wording.
Topic description
Expected Impact: Applicants are expected to define, qualify and quantify the expected impacts of their proposal in light of what is described in the call document (see Call document section 2). This will be assessed as described in the Award criterion ‘Impact’ (see Call document section 9 ). Objective: Based on article 11 of the LIFE Regulation 2021/783, the LIFE Multi Annual Work Programme 2025-2027, includes the possibility to finance each year a limited number of projects designed to support specific needs for the development and implementation of Union environment policy and legislation. Once a year, in consultation with Member States, the Commission makes an inventory of the specific needs regarding the development and implementation of Union environmental or climate policy and legislation that require to be addressed during the following years and identifies among them the ones that could be addressed by specific projects. Scope: Point 4.1.4 of the LIFE 2025-2027 Multi Annual Work Programme indicates that under “Other Actions”, additional projects responding to the Union legislative and policy priorities could be determined on annual basis, following a consultation with Member States. The list of specific priorities to be addressed in this call is provided below. The Section 2 of the Call document further spells out for each priority the specific needs to be addressed, the activities that can be funded, the expected impacts and any other requirement. The lists of LIFE-2026-PLP-NAT-ENV specific priorities are: Digitising Environmental Impact Assessments and permitting procedures Preserving primary and old-growth forest in critical regions of Europe through mapping and awareness raising Development and implementation of analytical methodology to distinguish between virgin and recycled polymers at custom controls Support for reducing discharges into marine waters from exhaust gas cleaning systems (scrubbers) installed onboard ships Capacity-building of authorities in Montenegro and Moldova
Conditions and documents
Conditions
1. Admissibility conditions: Proposal page limit and layout
described in section 5 of the call document.
Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System.
2. Eligible countries
described in section 6 of the call document.
3. Other eligibility conditions
described in section 6 of the call document.
4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion
described in section 7 of the call document.
5a. Evaluation and award: Submission and evaluation processes
described section 8 of the call document and the Online Manual.
5b. Evaluation and award: Award criteria, scoring and thresholds
described in section 9 of the call document.
5c. Evaluation and award: Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement
described in section 4 of the call document.
6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants
described in section 10 of the call document.
Call document and annexes:
Application form templates
Standard application form (LIFE TA CAP, TA-R, PLP and BEST) — the application form specific to this call is available in the Submission System
Mandatory annexes to the application form
Participant information (LIFE)
Optional annexes
Letters of support (no specific template)
Other (not mandatory) annexes such as Maps (LIFE) and Description of sites (LIFE)
Model Grant Agreements (MGA)
Additional documents:
Support information
Please read carefully all provisions below before the preparation of your application. Consult the FAQs in LIFE website Get in touch with your National Contact Point (NCP) . We want also to draw your attention on the possibility to get support from your NCP. To facilitate such support, it would be beneficial to add your NCP under the “Participants” step of the application, by clicking on “Add contact”. Then, Under “Project role”, use the option “Contact person” and add your NCP’s data.Please read carefully all provisions below before the preparation of your application. Funding & Tenders Portal FAQ – Submission of proposals . IT Helpdesk – Contact the IT helpdesk for questions such as forgotten passwords, access rights and roles, technical aspects of submission of proposals, etc. Online Manual – Step-by-step online guide through the Portal processes from proposal preparation and evaluation to reporting on your ongoing project. Valid for all 2021-2027 programmes.
Raw budget overview
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