Funding adaptation requires adequate governance and there are different ways to organise and channel the funds to where it is most efficient and most necessary. This paper investigates this issue and studies the practical implementation of a development under conditionality, namely adaptation-development, and its requirement in terms of finance architecture. To contribute to this research, the authors examine similar problems that have been met in the past, namely the European funding programmes for Eastern European countries that were candidates to adhesion, and European internal structural and cohesion funds. Publicly available documents from the European Commission and the European Court of Auditors are reviewed, providing insights into possible implementation of adaptation finance. Main lessons include:

“black-spot” (targeted) programmes are less flexible but more efficient than “concept-based” programmes
a multi-scale and multi-step approach can minimise sovereignty and ownership issues, and facilitate capacity building
private funding leverage is a myth, and funding based on the “additional cost” is highly inefficient
non substitutability among objectives and regions is necessary
sub-national eligibility criteria are a viable solution
institutional capacity matters: low-capacity countries should focus on capacity building and “black-spot” strategies; higher-capacity countries can follow a concept-based approach
the EU should use its own experience to promote its views on adaptation funds.