Commission tables first EU soil law, slammed for ‘lacking ambition’

The Commission’s new proposal for a soil monitoring law falls behind the initial ambition of giving soil a protected status similar to that of air or water, according to Green lawmakers and campaigners.

With 70% of soils across the bloc in an unhealthy state, the European Commission is proposing to regulate this area on an EU level for the first time with a new soil monitoring law tabled on Wednesday (5 July).

“Healthy soils are an essential part of the solution to strengthen resilience to natural disasters, help us achieve climate neutrality, revert biodiversity loss, and desertification,” EU environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius said during the presentation of the proposal.

“We are filling a major legal gap to bring soil – together with air, water, and the marine environment – under an EU legal act,” he stressed.

As part of the bloc’s soil strategy tabled in 2021, the Commission originally envisaged a ‘soil health law’ set to give soils the same legal status air and water already have in the EU. By the time the law was presented, its title name had changed to soil monitoring law.

Defining and monitoring

Accordingly, the legislation focuses on setting out a ‘definition of soil health’ as well as a ‘framework for soil health monitoring’, Sinkevičius said, adding this framework would bring together data from national agencies as well as the EU’s Copernicus space monitoring programme.

According to the proposal, member states would be obliged to collect data on soil health and assess it within five years in accordance with a methodology that is harmonised EU-wide.

This data would be gathered together with research from the EU’s Copernicus space monitoring programme to get a picture of soil health across the bloc.

The directive also aims to pave the way for farmers to boost their income through a voluntary certification system of soil health, which should go hand in hand with the Commission’s recently proposed carbon farming certification standards, Sinkevičius explained.

However, while the text “proposes sustainable management systems and regenerative practices” through which farmers can boost soil health, it does not contain obligations for farmers or member states to take action beyond monitoring.

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Watered down ambition

In the view of Green lawmakers and environmentalists, the law’s name change also signals that the ambition of the legislation is not what the Commission originally claimed it would be.

“The proposal that the Commission has presented today for a ‘Soil Monitoring Directive’ has nothing to do with a ‘Soil Protection Law’, as was still announced by the Commission in its Soil Strategy,” Green MEP Martin Häusling said in a statement.

With the aim of making all EU soils healthy by 2050 only presented as a possibility rather than a binding goal, and no obligation for member states to take action for soil health, the proposal “is very weak, to my great regret”, he added.

“Renaming the ‘Soil Law’ suggests the focus has switched to simply observing soil health rather than ensuring its improvement,” Caroline Heinzel, Associate Policy Officer at the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), also said.

According to the campaigner, “the proposal falls short of expectations by not including legally binding targets or requiring mandatory plans.”

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Fear of the EPP?

Meanwhile, Green MEPs Thomas Waitz and Sarah Wiener suspected that the intense lobbying against environmental measures in agriculture from the centre-right party group EPP in recent months was what led to a “toothless” directive.

The directive “was massively watered down for fear of the European People’s Party’s anti-environmental campaign”, Waitz said in a statement.

Asked during the press conference whether this was true, Sinkevičius said the new soil law was still “a major step ahead”, stressing that it is the first time a Commission has succeeded in proposing an EU-level legislation on soil.

“This is not an easy legislation to propose,” he stressed.

The Commissioner also argued that defining and monitoring soil health, as the proposal sets out to do, is a necessary “first step” towards then improving the state of EU soils.

Meanwhile, Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans said that the package of legislative proposals that the soil law came as part of might help ease differences with the EPP.

“We tried to build bridges between these different positions, and perhaps these proposals could help us,” he said.

Soils to receive same legal status as air, water in first EU-wide soil health law

The European Union’s soil strategy has outlined plans for a soil health law by 2023 to bring soil on the same legal footing as air and water, and EU lawmakers have warned this must be a hard deadline.

The proposal was also welcomed by the fertiliser producer YARA as “an important step towards a comprehensive and coherent framework to continuously improve soil health in the EU.”

The food industry, however, was less enthusiastic.

“There is currently a significant financing gap to meet the EU’s ambitions for better soil health,” the food industry association FoodDrink Europe said in a statement.

While the law “provides a good basis for soil descriptors, indicators and sustainable soil management practices, it falls short on clear guidelines and innovative tools for soil use and restoration by actors of the agri-food chain”, they added.

The proposal tabled by the Commission will now be discussed by the European Parliament as well as the member states, who can propose changes before agreeing on a final version together.

However, it is so far unclear whether this process can be finalised before the EU elections next June.

[Edited by Gerardo Fortuna/Nathalie Weatherald]

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