Since December 2015 Hungary has been benefitting from the Capacity Building action grant of the Life programme 2014-2020 managed by the European Commission so that it can contribute to the Programme more efficiently. The LIFE capacity building project is implemented by three partners in a consortium.

 The Hungarian LIFE Capacity Building project team consists of the thematic and financial support teams of the 3 beneficiary organisations: the LIFE Climate Team (LCT) of the Ministry of Innovation and Technology (MIT), the LIFE Environmental Support Team of the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) and the LIFE helpdesk at the Hungarian Development Centre (HDC).

During the project our main goal is that Hungary could be take part in the realization of the LIFE programme more successfully. For this reason the flowing actions have been initiated:

• we established a LIFE Climate Action Team within the MIT, a LIFE Support Team within the MoA, and a Support Team within the HDC;
• the “www.lifepalyazatok.eu” webpage has been established;
• a LIFE database on successful beneficiaries and partner search tool have been established;
• we translate the LIFE calls into Hungarian;
• we held thematic trainings for stakeholders interested in the LIFE programme;
• we took part in study tours to get acquainted with best practices of other Member States regarding the implementation of the LIFE programme;
• we provide general and financial helpdesk services;
• an impact study has been made on the implementation of the LIFE programme in Hungary.

Achievements of the LIFE Capacity Building project:

EVENTS:

Numerous events took place since the project start date:

• 13 environment protection and nature conservation thematic LIFE trainings:
  • 2 IP (Environment) trainings
  • 3 Nature and Biodiversity trainings
  • 1 Environmental Governance and Information training
  • 2 Environment and Resource Efficiency trainings;
  • 2 Trainings based on the applicants’ demand
  • altogether 812 participants (NGOs, private sector, policy makers, stakeholders…etc.)
• 1 LIFE Capacity Building Networking Workshop (participants: 54);
• 9 Climate Policy thematic trainings (participants: 329);
• 3 Information Days (participants: 248);
• 2 LIFE Project Management workshops (participants: 96);
• 3 LIFE Project Writers workshops (participants: 145);
• ‘LIFE25 Roadshow’
  • more than 25 destinations for various actors in 2017.

INFORMATION SYSTEM

Besides thematic training courses and theme-specific mentoring of potential applicants, information about the LIFE Programme has been spread also through the Hungarian LIFE webpage, as well as through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram sites both in English and in Hungarian.

 The Hungarian LIFE webpage (www.lifepalyazatok.eu ) contains the summaries of LIFE events, info days, workshops and thematic trainings, interviews with successful applicants, news from the EU LIFE webpage etc., which are also uploaded continuously with photo documentations. Visitors may also follow LIFE events from an online calendar.

On the website of LIFE webpage (www.lifepalyazatok.eu ) the following data show the activities:

• Attainment of website: 92 618
• Facebook followers: 3203 
• 9 newsletters with 1204 addressees/letter.

PROJECTS:

As a result of the above series of thematic training courses and theme-specific mentoring of potential applicants, a marked improvement of the Hungarian participation in the LIFE programme has been achieved by the end of the 2017 application period.

As a result of the support teams of the hungarian LIFE Capacity Building project team various activities, 32 traditional proposals were submitted to EASME with Hungarian participation to the 2017 Call:

• 19 proposals (9 ENV, 5 NAT, 5 GIE) by Hungarian Coordinating Applicants and
• further 13 proposals (3 ENV, 3 NAT, 3 GIE, 1 CCA, 3 GIC), where Hungarian organisations were Associated Applicants.

As a result of the early helpdesk activities of the Hungarian LIFE CAP teams, there were 2 successful LIFE traditional proposals under the 2016 Call:

• OAKEYLIFE in Nature and Biodiversity Priority Area and
• LIFE MICACC, the first successful Hungarianapplication within the Climate Action sub-programme (Climate Change Adaptation Priority Area)

Furthermore, 6 IP Concept Notes (3 ENV, 1 NAT, 22 CCM) were submitted to the Commission under the 2017 Call with Hungarian Coordinating Beneficiaries, altogether 9 Hungarian IP proposals were submitted to the Commission since the project start date.

The 1072/2017 (II.10.) Government Decree was adopted by the Hungarian Government in February 2017, which created the legal basis of a new national funding system in support of Hungarian LIFE applicants for the period between 2018 and 2024; the Implementing Regulation is foreseen to enter into force in 2018.

Ministry of Innovation and Technology (MIT):

• Their activity resulted in the rise of the number of consulted LIFE applications: 15 times more draft proposals consulting with the MIT compared to the baseline (2014-2015) of the CAP project;
• 4 LIFE CLIMA traditional proposals (1 CCM, 3 CCA) were submitted to EASME under the 2016 Call, among which 1 proposal was successful: LIFE MICACC
• 4 LIFE CLIMA traditional proposals (1 CCA, 3 GIC) were submitted under the 2017 Call, where Hungarian organizations are Associated Applicants
• altogether 3 LIFE Climate IP Concept Notes were submitted to the EASME  since the project start date: 1 CCM IP Concept Noteunder the Call 2016 and 2 CCM IP Concept Notes under the Call 2017, where Hungarian organizations are Coordinating and Associated Applicants, 1 CCM IP Concept Note was successful and invited by the EC to submit the Full Proposal in April 2018;
• the LIFE Programme has been included into the Second National Climate Change Strategy (“NÉS 2”) and its measure package Climate Change Action Plan 2018-2020 which will both be adopted (as foreseen) in 2018.

Ministry of Agriculture (MoA):

• significant rise of the submitted LIFE traditional and LIFE IP  proposals;
• number of the Hungarian LIFE traditional proposals in ENV sub-programme improved by 50%, compared to the previous years;
• 1 LIFE Environment and 1 LIFE Nature IP full proposals were submitted in 2016;
• 2 LIFE Environment and 1 LIFE Nature IP full proposals were submitted in 2017;
• 3 times more multinational consortia in the LIFE projects as in the previous years before CAP project;
• 1 successful LIFE proposal under the 2016 Call in Nature and Biodiversity Priority Area: OAKEYLIFE;
• number of consultations are 10 times more compared the previous years before the CAP project;
• the Hungarian LIFE CAP project coordinators participated in the events of other similar programmes (Interreg, OPs, Danube Region Strategy) and built synergies.