In 2014, the European Commission started a wholly new approach to EU Life projects by introducing top-down Life Integrated projects (IPs). Since then, 70 Life IPs have been funded. The aim of this report is to reach a comprehensive overall understanding on how successful the EU Life IPs have been – from the project leaders themselves.

Self-assessments of 54 Life integrated projects are analyzed in this report, representing 77% of all the 70 Life IPs. In a quantitative assessment the data was analyzed 1) by Life subprogramme; 2) by Life IP starting year; 3) by number of projects per country; 4) by country groups determined by national innovation environment; and 5) by geographical country groups. The qualitative questions were analyzed in a specific workshop organized for all the IPs.

The results showed that these projects have several strengths: Strong top-down strategical nature, based on national strategy. A long enough project period gives enough time to cooperate and make things happen. IPs work well as platform for new co-operation – complementary funding is particularly good in this. Commission bureaucracy is generally seen as the weakest point. However, fluent co-operation with monitoring team helps effectively to understand the bureaucracy.

Project leaders encourage strongly the Commission to continue supporting this type of projects, which are highly necessary nowadays.