While 60-70% of Europe’s soil is not in good health, the European Union and its Member States are far from making sufficient efforts to ensure soil sustainability, failing to make full use of the financial and legislative instruments at their disposal, denounces the European Court of Auditors in a special report published on Monday 10 July.
This report is the result of an audit carried out in five EU countries (Germany, Ireland, Spain, France and the Netherlands) over the 2014-2020 period, which saw the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) devote around €85 billion to soil health.
The Court of Auditors sought to establish: - if the conditions attached to direct payments to farmers (cross-compliance standards and greening practices) were sufficiently ambitious; - if the CAP’s voluntary measures were well targeted and adequately funded; - what was the impact of the derogations to the ‘Nitrates’ Directive (91/676/EEC) and whether the European Commission guaranteed the application of the requirements of this Directive in terms of effluent management.
The answer is ‘no’ on all three counts.
The results of the audit were made public on the same day that EU Environment Ministers, meeting informally in Valladolid at the invitation of Spanish Minister Teresa Ribera, were discussing an integrated vision for water, soil and biodiversity (see other news) – a meeting at which the Commission presented Ministers with its new proposal for a Directive on ‘Soil Monitoring and Resilience’ as part of a ‘Food and Biodiversity’ package (see EUROPE 13216/4).
“Our red flag should prompt the EU to take action to restore our soils to good health. We need to think about future generations. The forthcoming changes to EU rules provide an opportunity for European legislators to strengthen soil management standards across Europe”, according to Eva Lindström, the member of the Court responsible for the audit.
The auditors came to the following main conclusions:
Standards are not ambitious enough. While cross-compliance standards for soil and effluent management cover 85% of agricultural land, they are only leading to minor improvements in farming practices, in particular because the requirements set at Member State level often require farmers to make only limited changes in their behaviour.
In addition, the Commission has not assessed the level of ambition of these measures as part of its annual reviews of the measures taken by the Member States.
The use of funds is poorly targeted. The funds available for voluntary CAP measures were rarely allocated as a priority to areas with the most pressing soil problems.
Too many derogations. On the subject of derogations, the auditors noted that the removal of milk quotas had led to an increase in the number of livestock on farms which benefited from a derogation from the nitrogen ceiling imposed on the spreading of effluents – a derogation which hampered the achievement of the objective of the Nitrates Directive.
Recommendations. The Court of Auditors therefore recommends that the Commission:
- examine and report on the level of ambition of the standards and assess the results of their implementation;
- report in 2026 on the targeting of voluntary CAP measures on the most urgent local soil problems for the 2023-2027 programming period;
- limit the use of derogations and review conflicting objectives in other EU environmental policy areas;
- strengthen data consolidation at EU level by reducing discrepancies at Member State level.
The Commission has already indicated that it accepts these recommendations.
It will limit the use of derogations by reviewing contradictions with the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC), the nature protection Directives ‘Birds’ (2009/147/EEC) and ‘Habitats’ (92/43/EEC), which form the basis of the pan-European ‘Natura 2000’ network of protected natural areas, and the ‘NEC’ Directive (EU 2016/2284) on national emission ceilings for the five main atmospheric pollutants (see EUROPE 12632/20).
To consolidate the data, it will take steps to fill in the gaps when it prepares the next report on the implementation of the ‘Nitrates’ Directive, which will cover the period 2020-2023.
The Court of Auditors report: https://aeur.eu/f/7zm (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)