Funding for Nature 2000

Already during the financial framework 2007-2013, the European Commission has clearly defined its views on the importance of EU funding for biodiversity and nature protection in the next multiannual financial framework in its Communication “A Budget for Europe” in which it is clarified that the effective management and, where necessary, restoration of Natura 2000 sites are critical to the achievement of the EU 2020 target of halting and reversing the decline of biodiversity in the EU.

In order to ensure that the management of the sites is part of a wider spatial policy, the EU Commission has chosen an integrated approach, so as to allow Member States to set priorities and to develop policies and measures which reflect their national and regional specificities, and to avoid duplication and overlapping of different funding instruments of the European Union and the associated administrative complication and transaction costs. Following this approach, a number of funding opportunities for Natura 2000 have been included in each of the EU funds provided for in the funding period 2014-20.

Comunità Ambiente produced, as one of the tasks within the LIFE+ the project FARENAIT, a “Synoptic table of funds for Natura 2000 in Italy in the period 2014-2020”. The paper aims to identify briefly the most important opportunities for co-financing Natura 2000 in the period 2014-20. It focuses on the main EU funding instruments.

Information on funding opportunities are not always clear and easily identifiable in institutional websites. With this work we have tried to collect relevant information about the possibility of financing the Natura 2000 network in Italy in the period 2007-2013 in a single document, which provides the basis for more detailed research on how to fund specific interventions.