EU Auditors launch report on ‘LIFE strategic projects’, 11 December 2025

On Thursday 11 December 2025, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) will publish a special report on the EU’s LIFE strategic projects. LIFE strategic projects, funded through the EU’s LIFE programme, are designed to help countries to implement environmental and climate plans and strategies. By involving key stakeholders, often in addition to direct beneficiaries, mobilising additional funding, and spanning multiple political cycles, they help to bridge the gap between strategy and implementation.

The LIFE programme provided €701 million for 70 strategic projects in the 2014-2020 budgetary period (between €7 and €16 million per project). Since 2021, €436 million has been allocated to another 25 projects as of April 2025 (between €10 and €30 million each).

About the audit

The ECA published its first report on the LIFE programme 12 years ago. This new audit seeks to provide an understanding of the results of LIFE strategic projects. To this end, the EU auditors examined 22 strategic projects out of the 95 funded by LIFE as of April 2025. The report and press release will be published on the ECA website eca.europa.eu at 17:00 CET on Thursday 11 December. The ECA member responsible for this report is Joëlle Elvinger.

The ECA’s special reports set out the results of its audits of EU policies and programmes or management topics related to specific budgetary areas. The ECA selects and designs these audit tasks to be of maximum impact by considering the risks to performance or compliance, the level of income or spending involved, forthcoming developments and political and public interest.