Moving towards healthier soils in Europe

This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission.

The Commission welcomes the provisional political agreement reached today between the European Parliament and the Council on the Commission’s proposal for a Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive.

The Soil Monitoring Law will put the EU on a pathway to healthy soils for the benefit of citizens, farmers, land managers and the environment.

This is an important step to address the pressing challenges on soil health that impact every European country, the resilience of our food chain and the wider economy. The new law will also help to enhance the resilience of soils to natural disasters, heatwaves and extreme weather events, as well as other critical environmental challenges, such as erosion, contamination, and biodiversity loss.

The primary objective of the new directive is to introduce a framework to monitor soil health across the EU that is pragmatic and flexible, and based on national soil monitoring systems. Given the complexity of soil, the directive leaves a lot of flexibility to the Member States to adapt their approach to local soil conditions.

In line with the simplification agenda, the stepwise and pragmatic approach of the directive will keep the burden for Member States low. The agreement also extended most deadlines for the stepwise implementation of the directive proposed by the Commission. Furthermore, those Member States in need will be able to get the assistance of the Commission to undertake soil sampling, testing and archiving. The directive will also not impose obligations on monitoring or improving soil health and resilience on landowners and land managers, including farmers.

Specific measures to guarantee healthier soils

The agreement reached today provides for the following key measures to be taken by the Member States:

• Establish a comprehensive and harmonised, yet flexible, soil health monitoring framework with criteria for healthy soil;
• Provide support to soil managers to improve soil health and resilience;
• Mitigate the impacts of land take, such as buildings and infrastructures, on soil’s capacity to provide other ecosystem services while not preventing the permitting of such activities;
• Identify potentially contaminated sites and manage them to eliminate risks for human health and the environment while respecting the ‘polluter pays’ principle.

Next steps

The European Parliament and the Council will now formally have to adopt the new Directive before it can enter into force. It will then enter into force 20 days after its publication in the Official Journal of the EU, after which Member States will be required to put in place the national framework within 3 years for the directive to operate.

Background

The Commission adopted its proposal for the Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive on 5 July 2023. The Directive is a key element of the European Green Deal, the Soil Strategy, the Biodiversity Strategy and the Zero Pollution Action Plan.

Soil degradation and contamination pose significant risks to food security and safety, biodiversity, resilience to climate and extreme weather events. Currently 60 to 70% of soils in the EU are in unhealthy state. As an example, a billion tonnes of soil are washed away every year due to erosion, resulting in an estimated annual agricultural productivity loss of €1,25 billion. Costs associated with soil degradation are estimated at over €50 billion per year.

Making soil data available will support innovation, technological and organisational solutions, notably in farming practices. It will help farmers and other landowners implement the most appropriate treatment methods and help them increase soil fertility and yields, while minimising water and nutrient consumption. In addition, this data will improve our understanding of trends on droughts, water retention and erosion, strengthening disaster prevention and management. Healthy soils and better data provide additional income opportunities for farmers and land managers, who can be rewarded for carbon farming, receive payments for ecosystem services or for increasing the value of healthy soils and food produced on them.