It does appear that reanalysis data and various other specialized products are available free with an account at their website as described here. I believe reanalysis would only get you initial conditions which I don't believe is sufficient to run a mesoscale model like WRF(?), and that they are also poorer quality/resolution (please correct me if I'm wrong on any of these beliefs!!) Archived actual ECMWF output is still pay (see the bottom option on the license page).

I worked with ECM for a few years while producing content at StormVistaWxModels and definitely indeed found most things with them to be quite a challenge, limitation, and pity! At the time it was fairly abstruse to find what you needed or communicate with them, though it appears to have improved some.