European Parliament fails to break ground with vote to weaken Soil Monitoring Law
The European Parliament has voted to water down the proposed Soil Monitoring Law [1], undermining efforts to unlock the environmental and health benefits of soils for EU citizens. With the first dedicated EU law to address soil health, MEPs could have cleared the path for an ambitious text, but they planted weeds instead.
Soil is an essential component of life on Earth, regulating water, carbon, and nutrients – all crucial for mitigating and adapting to our changing climate. It also provides us with food, biomass, fibres, and raw materials. While all this is common knowledge, up to 70% of soils in the EU are unhealthy – and, until now, lacking dedicated rules at EU level [2].
Soil protection, conservation, and restoration in the EU is fragmented. As the first soil-specific legislation, the Soil Monitoring Law is supposed to address the dwindling health of soils, helping to realise the European Green Deal and meet EU climate goals [3]. The European Parliament has just made this far less likely.
MEPs weaken proposal for a Soil Monitoring Law
On top of an already unambitious proposal from the European Commission, the European Parliament voted yesterday for damaging amendments that will further weaken the Soil Monitoring Law. With an ENVI Committee report that had improved on the Commission’s proposal, this is a big step backwards – and a breakdown of the spirit of compromise that had prevailed in earlier negotiations.
Without legally binding targets or mandatory plans, and with weak, non-binding provisions on sustainable soil management and land take, the original proposal had already left a lot to be desired.
Notably, a majority of MEPs voted to also:
- Exclude raw material deposits from the definition of soil, reducing the scope of the law.
- Reduce oversight of the European Commission, weakening obligations for requirements on soil indicators.
- Remove the obligation for Member States to define and implement sustainable soil management practices, together with the obligation to assess and review those measures.
- Delete the obligation for Member States to set rules on penalties for non-compliance.
As this law enters the next stage of negotiations, environmental actors like ECOS now look to the Council to deliver a more ambitious piece of (long-awaited) legislation.
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Martina Forbicini, Programme Officer at ECOS – Environmental Coalition on Standards, said:
“We need healthy soils to reverse biodiversity loss and protect nature, for nutrition, for food security, and to safeguard our health – yet a staggering majority of EU soils are unhealthy. As the first dedicated legislation to address this, the Soil Monitoring Law could have been groundbreaking for the EU. Sadly, the harmful amendments adopted by the European Parliament will do little to improve the health of EU soils, destabilising the ground under EU climate goals.”
ENDS
Notes to editors
[1] Proposal for an EU Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive: https://environment.ec.europa.eu/publications/proposal-directive-soil-monitoring-and-resilience_en
[2] ‘EU can plant seeds of change with a strong Soil Monitoring Law’, ECOS blog, July 2023: https://ecostandard.org/news_events/eu-can-plant-seeds-of-change-with-a-strong-soil-monitoring-law/
[3] EU Soil Strategy for 2030: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52021DC0699
[4] ECOS feedback to public consultation on proposed EU Soil Monitoring Law: https://ecostandard.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/2023-10-30_ECOS_feedback_soil-monitoring-law.pdf
Contact
If you have questions, please contact me:
Alison Grace
Press & Communications Manager at ECOS
alison.grace@ecostandard.org
+32 493 19 22 59
ECOS – Environmental Coalition on Standards is an international NGO with a network of members and experts advocating for environmentally friendly technical standards, policies, and laws.
