In its proposal for a directive on ‘soil monitoring and resilience’, which it presented on Wednesday 5 July, the European Commission suggests that the European Union take a step towards promoting healthy soils by 2050, the long-term objective of the EU’s 2030 biodiversity strategy.
Flexibility and subsidiarity are at the heart of this future ‘European Green Deal’ legislation, which aims to put in place a solid and coherent monitoring framework for all EU soils so that Member States can take action to regenerate degraded soils.
The Commission’s stated aim is to enable soil to regain its multifunctional role in food security, climate and environmental protection - whether in terms of absorbing carbon or acting as a buffer in the event of natural disasters - and protecting human health.
In Europe, 67 to 70% of soils are in poor condition due to multiple pressures on a resource that is essential to life - degradation, erosion, acidification, compaction, excess nutrients, artificialisation, heavy metal and pesticide pollution and diffuse pollution, according to the European Commissioner for the Environment, Virginijus Sinkevičius (see EUROPE 13214/11).
“This legislation will enable us to take stock of the situation and help farmers who use beneficial practices such as crop rotation”, he said.
The proposal defines healthy soil on the basis of scientific criteria, indicators and thresholds set out in an annex to the proposal. Common criteria are proposed for excess nitrogen, for example. For other aspects, such as water content, it will be up to the Member States to define these criteria, given the wide diversity of soils in the Union.
For biodiversity, “there is no agreement on the parameters. It is therefore difficult to set thresholds. We hope that the directive will encourage research in this area”, according to one senior official.
The first soil evaluation by the Member States is scheduled to take place 5 years after the directive comes into force. The Commission’s, a year later, when enough data is available.
To make sustainable management the norm, the Member States will have to define the practices to be implemented by soil managers, including farmers, and those to be prohibited.
The Commission is also proposing that Member States be required to identify and investigate potentially contaminated sites and deal with unacceptable risks to human health and the environment.
No intermediate objectives. However, the proposed directive makes no provision for intermediate objectives, a far cry from what was hoped for in the 2021 Soil Health Strategy to provide soil with a European legal framework comparable to that which exists for water and air (see EUROPE 12834/2). The European Parliament itself had called for a common legal framework at EU level - in full respect of the principle of subsidiarity - on the protection and sustainable use of soil (see EUROPE 12708/9).
Asked why no intermediate objectives had been set, and what role the lack of confidence in the proposed regulation on nature restoration might have played, Mr Sinkevičius defended the level of ambition, referring to the 2006 Soil Directive, which never saw the light of day due to a blocking minority in the EU Council in 2014.
“This is not an easy legislative proposal, given that previous attempts have failed. The first phase is the definition of healthy soils with harmonised monitoring throughout the EU for an overall assessment. Global practices must then be defined on the basis of common principles. We want to achieve all this in 5 years. The next phase will be the revision of the legislative text in 6 years’ time”, justified the Commissioner.
See the proposed directive: https://aeur.eu/f/7x4
See the appendix containing the criteria and indicators: https://aeur.eu/f/7x5 (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)