Luxemburg, 27/06/2006 (Agence Europe) - Meeting in Luxemburg on Tuesday, EU environment ministers, unsurprisingly and without debate, adopted the Council common position on the LIFE+ financial instrument for the environment for the period 2007-2013. This formal adoption follows the Council's partial political agreement of December 2005 on the objectives of LIFE+ and how funding was to be shared between the Commission and Member States (see details in EUROPE 9081). At the time, ministers were awaiting the outcome of talks on the new EU financial perspective. With the uncertainty removed since April, the Council common position provides for a budget of €2.1 billion over seven years, 40% of which is to be devoted to the “nature and biodiversity” strand, which environment ministers added to the Commission's areas for priority action.
LIFE+ will bring simplification by gathering a broad range of existing environmental programmes and instruments into a single framework. These existing programmes include the current LIFE programme, the Forest Focus and Urban programmes, DG Environment's funding programme for environmental NGOs, and a general fund for policy development and implementation.
The new financial instrument is divided into three strands: - LIFE+ Nature and Biodiversity which will focus on the implementation of the EU directives on the conservation of habitats and of wild birds, and on further strengthening the knowledge needed to develop, assess, monitor and evaluate EU nature and biodiversity policy and legislation; - LIFE+ Environment Policy which will cover the other 6 Environment Action Programmes besides nature and biodiversity (climate change, health and quality of life, natural resources and waste) and issues covered by the seven thematic strategies; - LIFE+ Information and Communication.