Joint civil society letter to EU Commission on EU LIFE funding

CCB • December 5, 2024

EU LIFE operating grants: ensuring public participation in the development of environmental policy, enabling civil society engagement to strengthen democracy and support the European project.

5 December 2024 - In an open letter to the European Commission, together with other Environmental Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), we have called for enhanced recognition and support of our essential role "not only for Europe’s future, strong public participation and the resilience of European democracy, but also as a legal requirement under the Treaties and the Aarhus Convention".


The letter emphasizes the critical contribution of civil society to EU policymaking and the urgency of sustained funding to uphold their work in tackling pressing global challenges such as climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss.


The Role of Civil Society: Bridging Citizens and Policymakers


Civil society organisations serve as vital intermediaries between EU institutions and its citizens, ensuring that public voices resonate in policy decisions. These groups safeguard transparency, nurture institutional trust, and offer innovative, citizen-centered solutions to environmental challenges like marine conservation, water quality improvement, and renewable energy development.


“We represent significantly more than fifty million citizens involved in environmental organisations and have, over the past decades, constructively engaged in the development and implementation of EU policies”, our joint letter states.


Legal Foundation for Participation: A Core EU Value


The coalition highlights that civil society engagement is not merely aspirational but a legal obligation under the Aarhus Convention and Treaty on European Union (TEU).  


This includes providing the “citizens and representative associations the opportunity
to express and exchange their views in all areas of Union action” and stipulating that the
“institutions are required to maintain an open, transparent, and regular dialogue with civil society”.


The EU LIFE Programme: A Strategic Investment in Civil Society


The LIFE Programme, the EU’s financial instrument supporting environmental and climate action, explicitly prioritizes the involvement of civil society. Through this framework, NGOs play a pivotal role in implementing EU strategies, driving innovation, and amplifying policy impacts.


The letter stresses the EU LIFE Programme´s contribution "to the strategic priorities of the EU, and it has a long and successful history of supporting bottom-up projects that have helped CSOs and wider NGOs work with a range of stakeholders (including researchers and academia, businesses, farmers, local communities and others) across Europe to help mitigate climate change, ensure a fossil free energy transition, support farmers engaging in organic and agroecological practices, improve air and water quality, support nature conservation and restoration together with local actors and to engage with businesses in the creation of a sustainable economy, to cite a few."


The way forward

We are open to working with the European Commission and all EU institutions in advancing the European project for the benefit of all, for present and future generations.


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Read the full letter and list of signatories here.

CCB is looking for a Network Officer to join our team at the CCB International Secretariat

By CCB • April 9, 2025
Coalition Clean Baltic – CCB is a politically independent network, uniting 27 environmental non-profit organizations, as well as partners and experts from 11 countries surrounding the Baltic Sea. The main goal of CCB is to promote the protection and improvement of the environment and natural resources of the Baltic Sea region by encouraging new and constructive approaches and engaging people to become part of the solution instead of part of the problem. CCB Secretariat is based in Uppsala, Sweden.

Attacks on NGOs: 570+ Organisations Join Forces to Defend Civil Society

By CCB • April 7, 2025
European civil society organisations (CSOs) are currently facing an attack coming from certain Members of the European Parliament. Spearheaded by some MEPs from the European People’s Party (EPP) and by far-right groups, this attack resorts to misleading arguments to fabricate a scandal. This portrayal has been amplified through the media, with notable exceptions of articles that attempted to clarify this misleading narrative. European CSOs are crucial to ensure the voices of citizens from different parts of Europe are heard in the EU institutions. Attacks against civil society are unfortunately not new and are exacerbated by this harmful idea. Furthermore, for-profit corporate lobbying is through the roof when compared to non-profit advocacy. In 2024, the 50 corporations with the largest lobbying budgets collectively spent nearly €200 million on lobbying the EU alone (66% more than in 2015). Comparing this to the funding environmental NGOs receive under the LIFE programme - €15.6 million annually of a €700 million yearly budget - truly shows the weakness of this ‘scandal’. This is why over 570 civil society organisations from 40 countries, including all EU Member States, have joined forces to call on those in power to act now and ensure that civil society is adequately funded and enabled to share our crucial perspectives . In this statement, we address: The source of this false narrative; Inaccurate claims made about how CSOs obtain and use funding; Why it’s paramount that CSOs receive sufficient funding; The need for civil dialogue to enable CSOs participation. Democracy is about the right of citizens to be collectively heard for building an inclusive society and a shared European future; properly funded independent CSOs are a crucial tool for that. We call on decision-makers to ensure civil society organisations can thrive and play their role in interacting with policy-makers in order to have a more fully informed decision-making process. Read the full statement here . -END Civil Society Europe (CSE) is the coordination of civil society organisations at EU level. Through its membership, CSE unites EU-level membership-based organisations that reach out to millions of people active in or supported by not-for-profits and civil society organisations across the EU. CSE was created by several civil society organisations as a follow-up to the European Year of Citizens and was established as an international not-for-profit under Belgian law in 2016. Since then, it has become the point of reference for EU institutions on transversal issues concerning civil dialogue and civic space.