At its plenary session on Wednesday 19 June, the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) welcomed the possibility introduced by the EU Council of adapting the soil monitoring directive “to local conditions”.
At the Environment Council in Luxembourg on Monday 17 June, the Member States adopted the soil monitoring directive, the aim of which is to make all soils healthy and eliminate land take by 2050 (see EUROPE 13433/3).
The CoR stresses the “widely differing conditions in terms of ecosystems, soil composition, natural background concentrations” as well as the “differences in land use, population density and climatic conditions” across the European Union.
The integration of flexible mitigation principles into land use planning must be accompanied, depending on the EU region and city, by collaboration between the Member States, which are responsible for monitoring and assessing soil health within their territory, and local and regional authorities.
However, the press release published on Wednesday 19 June calls for “more concrete objectives and progress assessments at intermediate and long-term”. With “up to 70% of the soils in EU territory” in an unhealthy state, the CoR calls on the European Commission to “provide more technical and financial support to improve soil health at local and regional level” and suggests including dedicated funding for soil health in the EU’s next multiannual budget.
As well as encouraging organic farming and “other agroecological approaches”, the CoR also calls for “the ‘polluter pays’ principle to be applied”.
The rapporteur of the CoR opinion and a member of Lidköping City Council in Sweden, Frida Nilsson (Renew Europe), said that “representatives of cities and regions [were] ready to act”.
The directive is now being negotiated with the European Parliament. Negotiations should begin as part of the new legislative cycle, i.e. after the July plenary session. (Original version in French by Florent Servia)