Projects should fall under at least one of the two areas of intervention:

• Intervention area: “Space for Nature”

Any project aimed at improving the condition of species or habitats through areabased conservation or restoration measures falls within the eligible scope of the intervention area “Space for Nature”. This may include, for example, projects for restoring or improving natural or semi-natural habitats, or habitats of species, both within and outside existing protected areas. This may also include projects for creating additional protected areas (or improving the biodiversity focus and contribution of existing protected areas), ecological corridors or other green infrastructure, projects testing or demonstrating new site management approaches, projects acting on pressures, etc.

• Intervention area: “Safeguarding our species”

Any project aimed at improving the condition of species (or, in the case of invasive alien species, reducing their impact) through any relevant activities other than area-based conservation or restoration measures falls within the scope of the intervention area “Safeguarding our species”. Considering the broad range of threats that may act on species in addition to the degradation of their habitats, such projects may apply to a wide range of relevant measures, spanning from hard infrastructural works to awareness raising of stakeholders.

Under both areas of intervention, having clearly defined specific outcome-based biodiversity-related objectives for projects and their activities is a pre-condition for an objective prioritization of the proposals.

In order to allow for effective comparison of merits of proposals, the following principles will be applied for a first level prioritisation which defines the urgency under the two areas of intervention:

• For proposals targeting species and habitats covered by the EU Habitats Directive, priority is given to those that are clearly targeting habitats or species in unfavourable and declining conservation status.
• For the EU 27 Member States, for bird species, and species and habitats not covered by EU Nature legislation, priority is given to proposals clearly targeting those that are in higher extinction risk categories (in particular: endangered or worse) in the relevant EU red lists of habitats or species. For EU Outermost Regions and Overseas Countries and Territories priority is given to those in higher extinction risk categories (in particular: endangered or worse) in the (Pan) European or Global IUCN red lists respectively.

Further prioritisation of the proposals will be based on the policy priorities below:

• EU Birds and Habitats Directives
• Invasive Alien Species Regulation
• EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030