LIFE circular economy and zero pollution grants
Grants for public and private organisations implementing circular-economy and pollution-reduction projects, including water resilience and more energy-efficient wastewater treatment.
Tato příležitost je nyní dostupná v angličtině.
Put environmental solutions into practice, such as extending product life through repair and reuse, managing urban stormwater, or reducing the energy needed to treat wastewater. This LIFE offer covers circular economy, pollution reduction and sustainable use of natural resources; its scope includes climate-relevant work but extends beyond climate projects.
The formal category is Standard Action Projects. Innovative solutions must be new compared with national and sector practice. Best-practice solutions must be appropriate, cost-effective and among the most advanced approaches used nationally and in the sector. Both must be put into practical use at a scale and under conditions that can deliver the proposed environmental impacts (the call’s “operational scale” requirement).
The 2026 grant reimburses up to 60% of eligible project costs. It covers eligible costs actually incurred, while some cost categories use amounts calculated under the grant agreement instead of actual spending. Your project needs sufficient other resources to cover its budget. Projects run for 24–120 months, with justified extensions possible by amendment. You must estimate and report environmental outputs and impacts using the LIFE project indicators, retain records of work and costs, and meet the grant agreement’s implementation requirements. Projects with several grant recipients require an agreement between them on how they work together.
Eligibility
- Public and private legal entities may apply alone or together. Applicants receiving the grant, and their affiliated entities, normally must be established in an eligible country; exceptions are described below. The coordinator must be established in an eligible country. These include EU Member States and their overseas countries and territories, Iceland, Moldova, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Ukraine. Norway and Liechtenstein do not participate in LIFE. Serbia was negotiating participation when the 2026 country list was issued; participation depends on an association agreement covering the call and entering into force by the end of selection.
- Individuals are excluded except self-employed sole traders whose business has no separate legal personality. International organisations can qualify without the country restriction. EU bodies cannot join a consortium except the European Commission Joint Research Centre. Entities without legal personality may exceptionally participate if their representatives can take on legal obligations and provide equivalent protection for EU financial interests. Entities in other countries can receive exceptional funding if CINEA considers their participation essential.
- If an association’s members implement the work, they must also participate as beneficiaries or affiliated entities for their costs to qualify.
- Work normally takes place in eligible countries. Activities elsewhere must be necessary for EU environmental and climate objectives and for effective interventions within eligible countries.
- You need sufficient finances, experience, qualified staff and other resources to deliver the project and contribute your share. CINEA assesses operational capacity through the proposal’s team, experience and resources. The normal coordinator financial-capacity check exempts public bodies, international organisations and grants of no more than €60,000.
- Select no more than two subtopics for assessment. Projects exclusively about environmental governance belong under the separate governance topic. For air-pollution projects, a primary objective of cutting carbon dioxide emissions belongs under LIFE’s Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation subprogramme.
- You cannot pass funding on as financial support to third parties. Completed projects are rejected; started projects are assessed case by case, and activities before the project starting date or proposal submission cannot be reimbursed. Where the project concept requires life-cycle assessment, use the Product Environmental Footprint method to assess impacts across the product’s life.
- An action normally receives only one EU grant. EU Synergies actions, a special framework for combining EU support for an action, are an exception; outside that framework, keep EU-funded actions distinct and never declare the same cost under two grants. An EU operating grant can be combined only if this project is outside its work programme and the costs remain separate. Grants cannot generate a profit; for-profit organisations must declare revenues, with profit deducted from the final grant.
- EU restrictive measures exclude participation, and EU conditionality measures exclude funded roles. The call identifies Hungarian public-interest trusts established under Act IX of 2021 and entities they maintain as subject to the latter measures. The LIFE country list also applies the EU guidelines restricting Israeli entities and activities in territories occupied since June 1967.
How to apply
- Stav
- uzavřeno
- Otevírá se
- Uzavírá se
- Podmínky daného kola žádostí
- 2026 LIFE-2026-SAP-ENV-ENVIRONMENT round; single-stage submission.
The 2026 application round is closed. Use CINEA’s official call page and the call document to examine the ENVIRONMENT topic and its project priorities.
For the 2026 round, applications used a single-stage electronic submission through the EU Funding & Tenders Portal topic LIFE-2026-SAP-ENV-ENVIRONMENT. Participants needed an EU Login account and organisation registration to obtain a nine-digit participant identification code (PIC), followed by the online proposal and required annexes. Paper applications were not accepted.