A new life for the LIFE programme: interview with Jutta Haug

The new LIFE programme for environment and climate action has a budget of €3.46 billion for 2014-2020 in order to help member states preserve the common good of the Union’s environment and climate. This includes €864 million for a sub-programme for climate action. MEPs vote on the new LIFE programme 2014-2020 on Thursday 21 November. We asked Jutta Haug, a German member of the S&D group in charge of steering the plans through EP, for details.

Interview with Jutta Haug
Jutta Haug

What difference will the new LIFE climate sub-programme make?


The currently on-going LIFE+ programme is already financing projects in the field of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Given the success of these projects and the urgency for innovative action and best practices on climate change, it was upgraded to a separate sub-programme to which a quarter of the LIFE budget is dedicated. It will be very important to create synergies between the two sub-programmes (environment and climate), in particular in the field of biodiversity.


LIFE is the only instrument of the EU budget exclusively dedicated to financing environment- and climate-related projects - but it is an extremely small one, corresponding to only 0.3% of the EU budget. Integrating environment and climate into major EU funds such as the regional or agriculture funds thus remains crucial!


Your report mentions that some member states and regions have difficulties accessing the funds. What could be done to overcome this?


The new "Integrated Projects" under LIFE are a concrete mainstreaming tool to achieve the badly needed integration - as mentioned before. They aim to support, jointly with other EU funds under the lead of LIFE, the implementation of major environmental legislation. Integrated Projects would significantly contribute to an efficient use of funds!


The compromise we reached with member states sets a maximum ceiling of 30% of LIFE budget for Integrated Projects to ensure that the level of traditional LIFE projects can be maintained while testing the new approach.


What are your views on the newly introduced integrated projects which aim to support major environmental projects together with other EU funds?


It is true that the experience of previous LIFE programming periods has revealed disparities among member states in the uptake of available LIFE funds. The complex system of indicative national allocations introduced under the on-going LIFE+ programme (2007-2013) did not change this!


In my view, European solidarity, instead of allocating budget shares, means that we have to support member states and regions with low selection rates of projects to achieve a higher project quality. The Parliament achieved to introduce targeted capacity building measures – combined with a phasing-out of indicative national allocations after four years.





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