GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

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, 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) in the relevant EU red lists of habitats or species. 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 Directives
• Invasive Alien Species Regulation
• EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030

Applicants should take into account, when conceiving their project applications, that only wild flora and fauna and natural and semi-natural habitats may be targeted by LIFE Nature and Biodiversity projects.