Eligibility & organisational readiness

Erasmus+ is the EU programme for education, training, youth and sport for 2021–2027, with a budget of €26.2 billion. It funds the mobility of people, partnerships between organisations and capacity building in higher education. Ukraine takes part as a third country not associated to the Programme, so what is open is the international dimension rather than the whole programme.

LIFE is the only EU programme devoted entirely to the environment and climate action, with a budget of €5.432 billion for 2021–2027. It runs through four sub-programmes: nature and biodiversity, circular economy, climate action, and the clean energy transition. Ukraine has been associated to LIFE since 2022, so a Ukrainian organisation can be a full beneficiary.

A comprehensive expert guide to grant work with USAID, historically the largest bilateral donor in Ukraine, with programmes worth over $37 billion in total from 2022 to 2024. It includes the critical context of 2025: the suspension of programmes in January and the absorption of USAID by the State Department in July 2025.

Capacity Building in Higher Education is the Erasmus+ action built around universities outside the EU, which makes it the most important one in the programme for Ukrainian institutions. It has three strands, with grants from €200,000 to €1,000,000 and durations from 24 to 48 months.

Key Action 1 funds the movement of people: study and traineeships for students, teaching and training for staff. Mobility with countries outside the EU sits in a separate action, KA171, where the grant goes to the European institution and the Ukrainian partner sends and hosts participants under an agreed quota.

In Erasmus+ Ukraine holds the status of a third country not associated to the Programme, region 2 "Neighbourhood East". This is not the full access it has in Horizon Europe: a Ukrainian institution applies in its own right in centralised actions and joins decentralised ones as a partner of a European applicant.

Due diligence is the check a donor carries out on an organisation before awarding funds: whether it legally exists, whether it is financially sound and whether it has management systems in place. In EU programmes this happens after the project is selected, during grant preparation.

OFAC is the US Treasury unit that maintains the sanctions lists, above all the SDN list. The general federal grant rules contain no requirement to screen partners against those lists: it comes from sanctions law itself and from the terms of the specific award, so read your own agreement.