The document from World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said EUfunded projects are threatening the survival of the world's most endangered cat, the Iberian lynx, and the brown bear in Greece.

Alhough the EU has promised to halt biodiversity loss by 2010, rail and roadworks, dams and irrigation schemes financed by the European Commission are causing widespread destruction.

The charges were rejected by the commission, which says it has safeguards against damage to the environment. But the WWF document points to Spain, where it says EU funds are used for 20 dams and 16 roads, including a new highway that will harm the lynx habitat protected under the Natura 2000 network.

EU funds have been used to over-exploit bluefin tuna fisheries in the Mediterranean, and to promote damaging agricultural subsidies which have resulted in mismanagement of cork oak forests in Portugal.

In Greece, while the European Commission's environment directorate is supporting a project to protect brown bears, it is funding a planned highway, which directly threatens them. In northeast Poland, a Helsinki-Warsaw road is slicing through migration corridors for lynx and wolves. Some 42% of mammals are endangered in the EU, along with 15% of birds and 45% of butterflies and reptiles.

Stefanie Lang of the WWF said: "Europe has to take responsibility for its own species, but the EU is using its funds to both support biodiversity and undermine it."