EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Brussels, 5.7.2023

SWD(2023) 417 final

COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT

IMPACT ASSESSMENT REPORT

Accompanying the proposal for a

Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council

on Soil Monitoring and Resilience  (Soil Monitoring Law)

{COM(2023) 416 final} - {SEC(2023) 416 final} - {SWD(2023) 416 final} - {SWD(2023) 418 final} - {SWD(2023) 423 final}

Table of Contents

1Introduction

1.1Political context

1.2Legal context

1.3Coherence with other related initiatives

2Problem definition

2.1What are the problems?

2.1.1Root causes

2.1.2Scale of the problem at EU and Member States level

2.1.3Impacts of the problem

2.1.4Costs of soil degradation

2.1.5Sub-problems

2.2What are the problem drivers?

2.2.1Market failures

2.2.2Regulatory failures

2.2.3Behavioural biases

2.3How will the problem evolve?

3Why should the EU act?

3.1Legal basis

3.2Subsidiarity: necessity of EU action

3.3Subsidiarity: added value of EU action

4Objectives: What is to be achieved?

4.1The intervention logic

4.2General objectives

4.3Specific objectives

4.4Synergies and trade-offs with other objectives

5Policy options

5.1What is the baseline from which options are assessed?

5.1.1The contributions of recent initiatives

5.1.2Contribution of existing EU legislation (see Annex 6 for more details)

5.1.3EU Soil Strategy for 2030

5.1.4Existing Member States legislation

5.2Description of the policy options

5.3Options discarded at an early stage

5.4Summary of policy options

6Impacts and comparison of the policy options

6.1Analysis of building block 1: soil health definition and soil districts

6.1.1Environmental impacts

6.1.2Economic impacts

6.1.3Administrative costs

6.1.4Social impacts

6.1.5Implementation risks

6.1.6Stakeholder views

6.1.7Comparison of options

6.2Analysis of building block 2: soil health monitoring

6.2.1Environmental impacts

6.2.2Economic impacts

6.2.3Administrative costs

6.2.4Social impacts

6.2.5Implementation risks

6.2.6Stakeholder views

6.2.7Comparison of options

6.3Analysis of building block 3: sustainable soil management

6.3.1Environmental impacts

6.3.2Economic impacts

6.3.3Administrative costs

6.3.4Social impacts

6.3.5Implementation risks

6.3.6Stakeholder views

6.3.7Comparison of options

6.4Analysis of building block 4: identification, registration, investigation and assessment of (potentially) contaminated sites

6.4.1Environmental impacts

6.4.2Economic impacts

6.4.3Administrative costs

6.4.4Social impacts

6.4.5Implementation risks

6.4.6Stakeholder views

6.4.7Comparison of options

6.5Analysis of building block 5: soil restoration and remediation

6.5.1Environmental impacts

6.5.2Economic impacts

6.5.3Administrative costs

6.5.4Social impacts

6.5.5Implementation risks

6.5.6Stakeholder views

6.5.7Comparison of options

6.6Difficulty of quantifying costs and benefits

7Preferred option

7.1What is the preferred option?

7.1.1Timeline for implementation

7.1.2Expected effects of the preferred option on stakeholders

7.1.3Overview of impacts on competitiveness

7.2Legal form

7.3Overview of costs and benefits

7.3.1Impacts on urban and rural areas

7.3.2Available funding and expertise

7.4Coherence with other policies

7.5Simplification and improved efficiency

7.6Application of the ‘one in, one out’ approach

8How will actual impacts be monitored and evaluated?

Glossary

Abbreviations

1Introduction

1.1 Political context 

Soil and the organisms that live in it provide us with food, biomass and fibres, raw materials, and regulate the water, carbon and nutrient cycles. Soils make life on Earth possible but human pressures are exceeding planetary boundaries. 2  Ensuring soil health is key to address some of our most important societal challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, zero pollution and desertification. The Russian war in Ukraine has destabilised global food systems, intensified food insecurity risks and vulnerabilities across the world, and amplified the EU’s need to be able to feed itself in a sustainable manner for centuries to come. Healthy soils are key to secure our access to sufficient, nutritious and affordable food in the long-term. Without sustainable management and restoration, our soils will lie at the heart of future food security crises.

The soil file has a long history at EU level (see annex 5), but regained momentum with the European Green Deal that underlined the importance to protect, conserve and enhance the EU’s natural capital. As part of the Green Deal, the Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 3 announced the update of the 2006 Soil Thematic Strategy (STS) 4 to address soil degradation and fulfil EU and international commitments on land-degradation neutrality. The EU Soil Strategy for 2030 5 set the vision to have all soils in healthy condition by 2050, to make protection, sustainable use and restoration of soils the norm and proposes a combination of voluntary and legislative actions. Addressing soil degradation and ensuring the protection and sustainable use of soil, including by a Soil Health Law (SHL), is also included in the 8th Environment Action Programme. 6  

Regarding the position of the EU institutions, the European Parliament (EP) called on the Commission to develop an EU legal framework for soil including definitions and criteria for good soil status and sustainable use, objectives, harmonised indicators, a methodology for monitoring and reporting, targets, measures, and financial resources. 7 , 8  The Council of the EU supported the Commission in stepping up efforts to better protect soils and reaffirmed its commitment to land degradation neutrality. The Council wants to address desertification, land degradation and make progress towards no net land take by 2050. 9  Furthermore, the European Committee of the Regions (CoR), the European and Economic Social Committee (EESC) and the European Court of Auditors (ECA) have all called on the Commission to develop a legal framework for the sustainable use of soil. 10 , 11 , 12 , 13

The importance of soil health has been recognised globally and the EU has made commitments in the international context of the three Rio Conventions since soils are affected by desertification (UN Convention to Combat Desertification), contribute to climate change mitigation (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) and constitute an important habitat for biodiversity (Convention on Biological Diversity). Restoring, maintaining and enhancing soil health is included as a target in the new Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which was accompanied by a 2020-2030 action plan for the International Initiative for the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Soil Biodiversity. Soil health also directly contributes to the achievement of several of the Sustainable Development Goals and is high on the global policy agenda thanks to international initiatives like the Global Soil Partnership, 4 per 1000, the International Resource Panel, the UN Environment Assembly or the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Annex 5 sets out more details on the political context.

1.2 Legal context

The EU has comprehensive environmental measures covering sectors such as air, water, nature, circular economy, industrial emissions and chemicals. There is no dedicated EU soil legislation, but instead a patchwork of provisions impinging on soil health across existing EU legislation. For example, the Landfill Directive 14 sets operational and technical requirements to prevent leachate infiltration into the soil. Amongst horizontal EU environmental legislation, the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive 15  and the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive 16 require the assessment of the likely effects on soil of certain projects, plans and programmes. Provisions in other policy fields such as the Common Agriculture Policy or Climate Policy are also of relevance for soils. 

Annex 6 sets out the details on the legal context by describing the existing EU environmental legislation and its relevance for soils. Annex 6 also lists existing EU instruments in other policy fields than environment that are of relevance for soils, such as the new CAP which has enhanced its contribution to environmental and climate objectives.

Overall, soil health profits from the existing sectorial and horizontal environmental EU legislation in a tangential manner, supporting the specific objectives pursued by these acts, such as improving water or air quality, protecting habitats and biodiversity, managing waste properly, etc.

However, and as it appears notably from the table in annex 6 (and further explained in chapters 2 and 5 and detailed in annex 6), there is also a clear legislative gap regarding soil protection.

1.3 Coherence with other related initiatives

The objectives of this initiative will contribute to the EU climate change adaptation objectives by making the EU more resilient at reducing its vulnerability to climate change. Regarding climate change mitigation, the EU aims to achieve a climate-neutral and climate-resilient Europe by 2050. Achieving these objectives relies inter alia on carbon removals through the restoration and better management of soils to absorb the emissions that will remain at the end of an ambitious decarbonisation pathway, and on enhancing the capacity of soils to retain water.

The Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) Regulation was recently revised to make it fit for the 55% net emission reduction target for 2030. It includes a target that the LULUCF sector should remove 310M tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere to be stored in soils, biomass or harvested wood products. The LULUCF Regulation does not lay down rules on the definition of the sustainable management or restoration of soils and their health. The Soil Health Law and LULUCF Regulation will be mutually reinforcing, because healthy soils sequester more carbon and because the LULUCF targets incentivise sustainable management and restoration of soils. Enhanced and more representative soil monitoring can also contribute to the improvement of LULUCF accounting. In addition, the Soil Health Law would direct sustainable soil management to SOC-depleted soils where carbon management will be most effective, benefiting the terrestrial greenhouse gas balance as well es ecosystem health.

The Nature Restoration Law (NRL) 17 aims at restoring ecosystems (including significant areas of degraded and carbon-rich ecosystems, including forest ecosystems and cropland mineral soils 18 ) to good condition by 2050. The SHL will provide a more tailored approach to restoring degraded soils that complements the targets and actions of the NRL proposal. This will include provisions on the definition of the health, monitoring, sustainable management and restoration for soils in all terrestrial ecosystem types, as anticipated in the NRL proposal. 19  

The future new legislative initiative on forest monitoring and long-term planning will propose a framework to monitor the state and functions of the forests across the EU. The forest proposal will not include requirements relating to forest or soil management, or restoration. Duplications will be avoided e.g. by harmonizing data collection and shared indicators.

The EU Mission ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’, 20  and other Horizon Europe instruments, 21  together with the European Soil Observatory (EUSO) 22 will support the monitoring and soil assessment capacities. While they cannot replace the rolling out of an EU-wide soil monitoring network and do not deal with soil management as such, they can spearhead research and development in this area providing for example substantial insight on soil degradation and how to effectively deal with this. across the EU via various case studies. Together, these initiatives will work in synergy with all building blocks of the SHL and form a robust framework to address soil and land stewardship at the necessary scale for all types of land use and sectors.

2Problem definition

2.1 What are the problems?

The main problem that this initiative addresses is that soils in the EU are unhealthy and continue to degrade. Scientific evidence indicates that soil degradation in the EU is continuing and worsening (see Annex 7 for details and sources). Based on the data available, it has been estimated that about 60 to 70% of soils in the EU are currently not in a healthy state 23  i.e. showing one or more forms of soil degradation. The overall outlook indicates that degradation will accelerate without specific measures.

The main types of soil degradation include:

·Loss of soil organic carbon: soil organic carbon (SOC) is a fundamental element of the soil and an indicator for soil health. It results from the decomposition of plant material and the remains of soil organisms. The loss of SOC in mineral 24 soils leads to reduced fertility, reduced capacity to cycle water and nutrients and reduced soil biodiversity. Drained peatlands 25 are losing depth by 0.5 to 1 cm per year, leading to subsidence of the soil surface. Carbon losses from such soils dominate the negative carbon balance of non-forest terrestrial ecosystems in the EU.

·Nitrogen and phosphorus are essential elements for plants and organisms, but nutrient excesses are hazardous. An accumulation leads to the saturation of the soil and leaching or run-off to ground- and surface-waters causing eutrophication and acidification. Excessive application of nutrients can contaminate the air and contribute to climate change. The planetary boundaries for N and P flows have been exceeded strongly, which is causing changes to ecosystems and biodiversity.

·Soil acidification is caused by the accumulation of soluble inorganic and organic acids, at a faster rate than they can be neutralized. It decreases soil pH over time and may result in reduced soil fertility and loss of soil biodiversity.

·Soil erosion is the removal of soil by wind, water and other processes. Erosion is unsustainable when the soil loss rate is higher than the rate at which soil regenerates (approximately 1.4 tonne per hectare per year or 1.4 t/ha/y).

·Soil compaction is the reduction of the micro-cavities or pores in the soil. Soil compaction is generally irreversible or requires long time to reverse, 26 in particular for the deeper part of the soil that cannot be reached by machinery (subsoil compaction). Compaction is particularly severe when the pressure is applied under wet conditions, when the soil is softer (e.g. sandy soils) and thus loses more volume for a given pressure.

·Soil contamination is the occurrence of contaminants in soil above a certain level causing deterioration or loss of one or more soil functions. Point-source or local soil contamination is caused by specific events or contaminating activities (e.g. industrial production) within a specific area or site, where the source of the contamination is usually clear. Diffuse soil contamination is a more widespread form of contamination caused by diffuse sources and multiple activities that sometimes interact and have no specific point of discharge (e.g. atmospheric deposition). It is therefore more difficult to assess and control than point-source contamination. Contaminated soils can also leach to surface, ground, coastal and marine waters.  

·Salinization is the accumulation of water-soluble salts in the soil that affects hotspots in the EU, often along the coastlines. High concentrations of salt adversely affect plant growth and degrade soil structure, resulting in less fertile soils, less yields, less soil organic carbon, and soil erosion.

·Desertification is defined by the UNCCD as land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas. 

·Water provision: the capacity of soils to retain water is steadily diminishing. The sponge function of the soil is key to mitigate the effects of climate change, drought and floods.

·Loss of soil biodiversity: Soil biodiversity is the variability of living organisms in soil (e.g. earthworms, springtails, mites and wild pollinators that nest in soil) and includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems. Soil biodiversity determines the multi-functionality of soils, including soil fertility, underpins the delivery of ecosystem services, and is closely linked to above ground biodiversity. 

·Land take is the increase in artificial or settlement areas over time. 27  Soil sealing is the extreme form of land take through the covering of soils by buildings, construction and layers of completely or partly impermeable material. Sealing causes the complete and irreversible loss of all soil functions and ecosystem services.

2.1.1Root causes

The main root causes for soil degradation are:

·Loss of soil organic carbon in mineral soils: overgrazing, loss of vegetation and vegetative soil cover, physical soil disturbance, poor crop rotation and crop management, intensive input farming, deforestation, biomass burning, land use change, contamination, climate change; 

·Loss of soil organic carbon in organic soils: drainage, unsustainable water management, land use change and conversion to more intensive uses (e.g. for agriculture and forestry), physical soil disturbance, overgrazing, climate change, peat extraction; 

·Excess nutrient content: excessive / unbalanced application of fertilisers, high livestock density, atmospheric deposition, poor crop rotation, land use change, compaction, loss of soil organic matter and soil biodiversity;   

·Acidification: excessive application of (acidifying) fertilisers, poor crop rotation and diversification, insufficient vegetative soil cover, run off, loss of soil organic matter, atmospheric deposition;

·Erosion: insufficient vegetative soil cover and landscape features, large homogeneity in field size and structure, physical soil disturbance (tillage and ploughing), soil loss through harvesting of root crops, compaction, poor crop management, overgrazing, deforestation, combined with topography, rainfall intensity, wind, climate change, loss of soil organic matter;

·Compaction: increased mechanisation, traffic of heavy machinery, high wheel pressure, high livestock density, poor crop rotation, physical pressure on the soil especially in wet conditions, large and dense crowds.

·Contamination: industrial activities, mining, services (petrol stations, dry cleaners, car repair, etc.), improper waste management (landfills, littering, illegal dumping, etc.), storage of substances (e.g. heating oil tanks, etc.), transport and combustion, military activities, spills, fires, accidents, atmospheric deposition, geology (e.g. volcanos), fertilizers, pesticides, contaminated sewage sludge, agricultural plastics, irrigation, floods, improper water management, backfilling with contaminated excavated soil;

·Salinization: poor or unsuitable irrigation (e.g. use of brackish or saline water), improper drainage, overexploitation and extraction of groundwater, de-icing of road infrastructure, climate change, saline water injection by industry, waste disposal, salt-rich wastewater;   

·Desertification: climate change, poor irrigation and water management, monocropping, overapplication of fertilizers and pesticides, deforestation, insufficient vegetative soil cover and vegetation, wildfires, land abandonment, overgrazing, erosion;

·Reduced water retention: combination of loss of soil organic carbon, soil compaction, soil sealing and its root causes;

·Loss of soil biodiversity: physical soil disturbance, monoculture and poor crop rotation, insufficient soil cover, over fertilisation, use of pesticides, climate change, land use change, invasive alien species, ecosystem decline and habitat disruption, soil contamination, loss of soil organic carbon, erosion, sealing, compaction;

·Sealing and land take: development of infrastructure, roads, housing, commercial and industrial property, land use change, urban sprawl, spatial planning, demographic and economic growth.  

Climate change is an important root cause of soil degradation. Factors such as temperature, precipitation, wind patterns or sea levels influence to a high degree soil degradation processes like erosion, decline in soil organic matter, desertification, salinization and loss of soil biodiversity. For compaction, contamination, sealing and land take, the influence of climate is less dominant. Climate change and drought influences soil health and vice versa: both processes intensify each other which can lead to a mutually reinforcing downward spiral. Anthropogenic activities and soil management also have a detrimental impact on soil health and alter soil properties, that can further amplify the effects of climate change.

2.1.2Scale of the problem at EU and Member States level

The EEA concluded in its SOER 2020 28 that “soil degradation is not well monitored, and often hidden, but it is widespread and diverse”. The following table presents the distribution of the aspects of soil degradation in the EU detailing the 60-70% estimation, the existing trends and the outlook.

Table 2‑1: Scale of the problem, trends and outlook by aspect of soil degradation

The estimated range of 60-70% of soil degradation expresses the uncertainty of the problem at EU level: this is due to a partial lack of representative data, for example on soil compaction and on soil contamination, lack of thorough monitoring and harmonized definitions, as well as the different situation of soil conditions across the EU. On the other hand, the uncertainty level is mitigated by modelling and case studies, decades of soil science and confirmation from different sources. In this context, the situation of soil degradation at EU level can be seen in graphic detail in the EU Soil Health Dashboard published by the JRC under the EU Soil Observatory. The map shows where scientific evidence converges to indicate areas that are likely to be affected by soil degradation processes and is updated as scientific evidence becomes available. The sources of the data as well as the limitations are described therein. 31

The following table provides the best available information on soil health issues at Member States level. The data available, however, identify only the aspects that could be quantified per Member State based on the information available. 32  Quantification is available only for some land uses (namely cropland or agricultural land) or for limited elements of soil degradation (e.g. only copper and mercury concentration for soil contamination; concerning salinization, only areas equipped for irrigation). The table provides therefore only an order of magnitude of the distribution of soil health issues in Member States. It is therefore possible to anticipate a provisional distributional impact among Member State, showing which Member States would be likely to have to make more of an effort than others to achieve objectives of healthy soils for each type of soil degradation for which quantification at Member State level are available. The summary values of the table are represented in maps for each country in the country fiches in Annex 12.

Table 2‑2: share of quantified soil health issues by Member State 33 for each available indicator (see annex 7 section 1.3 for details)

2.1.3Impacts of the problem

Healthy soils have the capacity to provide ecosystem services that are vital to humans and the environment. In particular, they:

1.provide safe and nutritious food, and biomass, including in agriculture and forestry;

2.absorb, store and filter water;

3.transform nutrients and substances, including dead biomass and excreta;

4.provide the basis for life and biodiversity, including habitats, species and genes;

5.act as a carbon reservoir;

6.provide cultural, recreational and health services for people.

Soil degradation has therefore significant negative impacts, affecting the provision of ecosystem services and leading to risks for human health, the environment, economy and society, including:

·Reduced soil fertility. Soil degradation impacts fertility, yields and nutritional food quality. Studies show that over the last 70 years, the level of many minerals and nutritious elements in almost every kind of food has fallen between 10 and 100 percent, 34 which may have serious effects on our health and well-being. Soil degradation undermines the resilience and profitability of agriculture in the EU, the production of biomass for the bioeconomy as well as the growth and resilience of forests. It is estimated that between 61% and 73% of agricultural soils are affected by erosion, the loss of organic carbon, nutrient (nitrogen) exceedances, compaction or secondary salinisation (or a combination of these threats). 35  Soil compaction for instance may lower crop yields by 2.5-15 %. 36  These degradations and their impacts on crop yields are discussed in Annex 7 – 4.1.2.

·Climate change. Soil degradation amplifies the effects of climate change on the land surface, while sustainable soil management and restoration helps to mitigate climate change. Europe’s resilience to climate change depends on the level of soil organic matter and fertility, water retention and filtering capacity, and resistance to erosion. Carbon farming practices could help to store up to 260 MtCO2 in soils per year and contribute to mitigate climate change.

·Risks to human health. Several soil degradations harm human health:

oErosion by wind can lead to greater amounts of airborne particulate matter, causing respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, and indirectly harm human health through the deterioration of water quality.

oSealing prolongs the duration of high temperatures during heat waves and reduces the capacity of soils to act as a sink for pollutants.

oContamination of soils can affect food safety. Ingestion of chemicals can occur via ingestion of contaminated soil or plant uptake. Approximately 21% of agricultural soils in the EU 37  contain cadmium concentrations in the topsoil that exceed the limit for groundwater. While some metals are essential for plant growth (e.g., copper, iron, zinc and other macro- and micro-nutrients), high metal concentrations can induce toxicity for plants and expose the human population to diseases. Children are at greatest risk because they play close to the ground.

·Loss of above-ground biodiversity. Soil degradation causes not only the loss of below ground biodiversity, but also a reduction of above ground plant, animal, fungal and microbial diversity. Most biodiversity is bound to the soil ensuring the decomposition and mineralisation of organic material (e.g. plant residues, manure, carcasses), influencing the carbon, nutrient and water cycles, providing natural pest regulation, and building the foundation of the food web.

2.1.4Costs of soil degradation

The table below presents the summary of the best quantifications available for the cost of soil degradation by aspect of degradation. This represents the cost of taking no action to address soil degradation. At the same time this would represent the benefit of addressing soil degradation and achieving soil health.

The range of costs of soil degradation is inherently uncertain, so lower and upper figures are presented for quantified costs only. Estimates are provided on an impact-by-impact basis using figures taken from a literature review, and where these are not available updating on the basis of the quantification of costs of soil degradations in the Impact Assessment for the Soil Framework Directive from 2006. 38  

As shown in the summary Table 2 ‑ 4 , the sum of quantifiable costs of no-action gives the broad range of EUR 16.5 to 68.8 billion per annum, excluding the costs of soil contamination. Soil contamination is more uncertain and increases the range by EUR 3.4 to 292.4 billion per annum (see Annex 9, section 4.2.2 for details). However, it is important to note that these values represent only the quantifiable costs: the table also lists the costs that could not be quantified for each of the soil degradations. 39  These costs of no action are split between on-site components (typically those experienced by soil managers) and off-site components (typically those experienced by other actors and society at large). Off-site costs of no action represent the cross-boundary nature of soil degradation and are often not possible to quantify.

Table 2‑4: cost of soil degradation (cost of no action); as well potential benefits of addressing soil degradation

Given the wide range of estimation, the study which assessed the contamination related costs 40  has used also a more prudent intermediate value that was updated at EUR 24.4 billion. 41 This is the one used in the overview of costs and benefits in chapter 7.3 to avoid overestimation.

2.1.5Sub-problems

The reason for the persistence and the negative outlook of the main problem are described by the two key sub-problems:

A.Data, information, knowledge and common governance on soil health and management are insufficient.  

-The minimum number of soil samples in the EU needed to have a statistically reliable measurement of soil health, taking into account the variability of soil condition (soil type, land use and climatic conditions), has been estimated by geostatistical methods at 210 000 points. Currently there are 34 000 points from Member States and 41 000 from LUCAS Soil campaign of 2022, while they were about 20 000 in previous LUCAS Soil campaigns. This shows the large gap to sufficient data on soil health. Furthermore, soil data from Member States are in general not public and not shared at EU level, so they cannot be used as data for assessing soil health at EU level.

-Some Member States have soil monitoring schemes in place, but they are fragmented, not representative and not harmonised. Member States apply different sampling methods, frequencies and densities, and use different metrics and analytical methods, resulting in a lack of consistency and comparability across the EU. Furthermore, soil data are not consistently stored in one accessible database. Monitoring soil health also requires access to land.

-Current density of on-field measurements is not sufficient to adequately assess soil in a representative way at more local level, given the large variability of soil types, climatic conditions and land uses, and thus to inform adequate soil restoration actions.

-Quality data on soil health is lacking, especially on soil organic carbon, 42 water retention capacity, contamination with organic compounds and biological parameters.

-The LUCAS soil survey is a very useful tool for a harmonised and comparable assessment of soil health at EU level, but it currently lacks a clear legal mandate, depends on temporary administrative arrangements and its continuation is not secured.

-The current low density of soil sampling locations is not sufficient to representatively assess soil health at local level.

B.Transition to sustainable soil management and restoration, as well as remediation is needed but not yet systematically happening, e.g. for the unsolved legacy of contaminated sites.

-Current data and research show a continuation of unsustainable soil management practices even if they are detrimental to soil health (e.g. utilisation of heavy machinery, broad pesticide application, poor crop rotation, lack of soil cover) due to the below described drivers.

-Concerning the contaminated sites, the current rate of identification, registration, investigation, assessment and remediation will prove insufficient by 2050 to avoid risks for human health and the environment, and to achieve the zero pollution ambition.

2.2What are the problem drivers?

The problem drivers can be grouped into market failures, regulatory failures and behavioural biases. Together these drivers contribute to the two sub-problems, and through them to the overall problem. Throughout these categories, recurrent themes are lack of relevant and verifiable information and a failure to fully implement sustainable soil management practices.

2.2.1Market failures

Insufficient internalisation of environmental costs. The costs caused by practices harmful to soils are often not borne by those who benefit from them, in a phenomenon known as ‘externalities’. Whereas the short-term benefits of harmful practices are generally concentrated with the current landowner or land manager, its costs are borne by people that can be distant in time (in the future, over several generations), social or economic condition, or in space, including in other Member States of the EU. The fear of being undercut on costs by competitors leads land managers to adopt or retain harmful practices. This occurs also when the landowner and the soil manager are aware that soil health is part of their asset. Insufficient internalisation also means that the financial gains from land take can be considerably larger than the financial value of ecosystem services for the landowner, even if the opposite can be true from the point of view of society. This is a typical case of market failure to preserve ecosystem services and nature, where the financial computation performed using the marginal cost and benefit, as evaluated at the small scale of each individual actor, leads to decisions that, when aggregated, are collectively unsustainable. Concerning soil pollution, this market failure is closely linked with the non-application of the polluter-pays principle. 43

Short time decisions. Soil is formed at very low rates, meaning that it should be considered as a non-renewable resource. Therefore, the time horizon of public policy, taking into account the public interest of all involved parties, does not normally include the needs of the future generations. The long-lead times of soil restoration mean that to achieve the EU’s long-term goals, such as climate neutrality in 2050, action should start immediately. Economic operators, however, have to pay interests on their loans and are not incentivised to consider long time horizons when it comes to soil. Short- and time-limited land tenure contracts tend to discount (i.e. largely ignore) non-sustainable practices (short termism) albeit landowners or land users are becoming more aware, due to climate change (frequency and intensity of weather events that greatly affect a particular area).

Asymmetry of information on soil health. Connected to the lack of parameters to define the health of soils and with the lack of obligations in this respect, in transactions bearing on the sale of a piece of land, there is often an asymmetry between the knowledge held by the seller on the condition of the soil on that piece of land (which is relatively higher, based on past empirical experience) and the knowledge of the buyer (which is lower, in the absence of data and of a scientifically stable assessment method). This lack and asymmetry of information reduces the incentives for landowners to have good soil management practices, as the detrimental consequences of these will be difficult to detect by a buyer, and hence will have minimal consequences on the selling price.

2.2.2Regulatory failures

There is no dedicated EU legislation which protects soils like the ones existing for other media such as air and water. The EEA pointed out in the SOER 2020 that “the lack of a comprehensive and coherent policy framework for protecting Europe’s land and soil resources is a key gap that reduces the effectiveness of the existing incentives and measures and may limit Europe’s ability to achieve future objectives related to development of green infrastructure and the bioeconomy”.

There is a clear gap within the existing current EU legal framework (see Annex 6 for a detailed gap analysis for each of the soil degradations):

·There is a lack of definitions, indicators and criteria to define the notion of “healthy soils” and there is currently no obligation to monitor all aspects of the health of soils. The assessment of the quality and health of soils is a subject of active research and of long-lasting controversy among scientists, practitioners and Member State authorities. It is therefore difficult, without a commonly agreed soil health definition and of indicators to measure it, to conclude on the condition of a soil. In addition, there is a lack of binding policy objectives relating to soil as such, and this is not covered by the objectives put in place for other areas such as air and water.

·There is a gap regarding the need to manage soil sustainably, avoiding their deterioration, as well as to restore those that have lost capacity to deliver ecosystem services.

Overall, soil health profits from the existing sectorial and horizontal environmental EU legislation only in a tangential manner (e.g. as regards excess of nutrients and some pollution aspects), supporting the specific objectives pursued by these acts, such as improving water or air quality, protecting habitats and biodiversity, managing waste properly. However, the existing EU legislation does not address soil properly for the reasons explained in chapter 1 and Annex 6. Due to their different objectives and scopes, and to the fact that they often aim to safeguard other environmental media, existing provisions, even if fully implemented, yield a fragmented and incomplete protection to soil, as they do not cover all soils and all soil threats identified. An analysis of existing environmental legislation for each of the soil degradations is presented visually in table 2.1 of Annex 6.

There is also a gap regarding national legislation. While some Member States have put in place soil protection legislation, others lack nationally coordinated actions on soil protection and soil threats. Soil benefits often indirectly from other pieces of national legislation such as legislation on water, urban planning or industrial or agricultural activities.

It appears from the analysis (see Annex 6), that on the one hand the approaches vary from one Member State to another and on the other hand that some degradation aspects are better covered than others:

·Differences amongst Member States: a few Member States have dedicated legislative acts on soils while in the other Member States soil may benefit indirectly from other legislation. As an example, the Soil Act in Bulgaria focuses on the prevention of soil degradation and damages, the lasting protection of soil functions and the restoration of damaged soil functions. In France on the contrary, provisions on soils are dispersed in various legislative acts such as laws concerning urban planning, biodiversity, or climate.

·Differences concerning the aspects of soil degradation: In many Member States, the national legislation contributes directly or indirectly to address loss of soil organic carbon, soil erosion, loss of soil biodiversity and sealing of soil. On the contrary, in a large majority of Member States there is no or little contribution from national legislation (beyond national legislation transposing EU legislation) to address soil salinization, excess of nutrients in soils, soil acidification and water retention capacity.

This gap is reflected by the deterioration of soils across the EU as explained in section 2.1.2 above.

One notable example of insufficient legislation on soil at national level are rules on contaminated soil. Although there are provisions in many Member States on soil contamination, it appears that only a very small fraction of all chemicals that can contaminate soils are regulated under national legislation via contaminant thresholds, and other important policies and instruments that could remedy to the issue, such as maintaining a register of contaminated sites or assessing risks and remediating sites in case of inacceptable risks are also lacking. National legislation has not been successful in tackling historical soil contamination since it is estimated that there are still around 2,8 million of potentially contaminated sites in Europe. A big challenge results from the extremely different implementation of national approaches to tackle contaminated sites, indicating high potential health risks for many citizens

This uneven and fragmented response by Member States to tackle soil degradation has led to an uneven playing field for economic operators who have to abide to different rules, while competing on the same market. It has also prevented the take up of (financial) incentives, training and advice to stimulate sustainable soil management.

2.2.3Behavioural biases 

Lack of awareness of the importance of soil health, its complexity and its multiple benefits. Soil health is often taken for granted because it is still capable of producing (albeit less intensively) even if degraded. The lack of knowledge by stakeholders of the functioning of soils, the provision of ecosystem services and its link with human health is significant and has been pointed out by all stakeholders as a major barrier to achieve healthy soils. Moreover, the variability of soil conditions and uses generates a complexity that represents a significant barrier to the adoption of sustainable practices. Insufficient awareness of the consequences of soil degradation aggravates the other drivers when food and biomass producers feel bound by market and industry dynamics, which often drive them to seek short-term solutions to arising problems, including financial difficulties.

Delayed detection of soil degradation. Unlike for other environmental media, soil degradation often is invisible to the naked eye. Land users are often unaware of the poor state of their soils. By the time the impacts of such degradation start being noticeable (in the crops, in the water, etc), it often means that the damage is already very severe and sometimes the remedy comes too late. It is this complex delayed detection of symptoms that often prevents land users from taking the necessary management measures in time.

Furthermore, specifically concerning farmers, a number of barriers have been identified that are hindering the implementation of sustainable soil management practices: 44

·Perceived economic barriers such as operating costs and capital investment costs as well as the risks and uncertainties associated with the implementation of new practices;

·Technical barriers: many of the SSM practices needs to be adapted to local conditions in order to maximise their benefits;

·Lack of information: the knowledge produced does not always reach nor is it always useful for the farmer to apply on the field;

·Lack of advisers able to deliver credible and balanced advice at the farm level, with a good level of specialist soil knowledge, able to take into account of trade-offs and synergies between soil functions and the ability to accommodate different styles of farmer learning.

Structural barriers (such as technological lock-ins, data ownership and use, structure of the food chain) that lock farmers into a certain system of agriculture; these impact farmers’ ability to change representing inertial factors that are beyond the capacity of the individual farmer to overcome.

2.3 How will the problem evolve?

As found by the European Environment Agency, without additional action, the problem will persist. 45  Trends and outlook for the different degradation processes are presented in section 2.1. The assessment of past trends in the last 10-15 years, the outlook for 2030, and prospects of meeting policy objectives and targets for soil health and land take are very worrying, since deteriorating trends dominate (see also

2.3.1 Scale of the problem at EU and Member States level

The EEA concluded in its SOER 2020 that “soil degradation is not well monitored, and often hidden, but it is widespread and diverse”. The following table presents the distribution of the aspects of soil degradation in the EU detailing the 60-70% estimation, the existing trends and the outlook.

Table 2 ‑ 1 Table 2 ‑ 1  on detailed trends and outlook by soil degradations as well as Annex 7 section 1.3.2). The underlying drivers of soil degradation are not projected to change favourably in the future, so the functionality of the remaining healthy soils will come even more under pressure. The EU is certainly not on track to achieve healthy soil resources based on the existing strategies and policies. More harmonised, representative soil monitoring is needed to develop early warnings of exceedances of critical thresholds and to guide sustainable soil management. There is a high risk that the EU will fail some of its own Green Deal and international commitments such as land degradation neutrality, despite the existing patchwork of legislation and the legislation being developed. Additional measures could contribute but only partially, see Section 5.1 on the baseline, with the NRL, LULUCF, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) National Strategic Plans and other ongoing initiatives leading potentially to some improvements on the aspects of soil health.

Some regions will be more affected by soil degradation also due to the impacts of climate change. Nevertheless, across the entire EU in the coming decades, the pressure on soil will increase with demands from food, water and energy likely to grow. Food security is particularly sensitive to soil health. Left to itself, in the light of the trends in the last decades, there is a risk that soil degradation may lead to additional societal and environmental problems that combine features such as low productivity soils that are vulnerable to degradation, climate change that amplifies extreme conditions, low availability of productive soils, or high population density or population growth. The increased demands for food, fibre, biofuels, water, infrastructure and settlements result in growing competing claims for land and soil, and as a consequence, more and more difficult trade-offs between ecosystem services. 46

3Why should the EU act?

3.1 Legal basis

The legal basis for the EU to act on soil health lies in Articles 191 and 192 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). These articles empower the EU legislator to take measures aimed at:

·preserving, protecting and improving the quality of the environment,

·protecting human health,

·prudent and rational utilisation of natural resources,

·promoting measures at international level to deal with regional or worldwide environmental problems, and in particular combating climate change.

Given that this is an area of shared competence between the EU and the Member States, EU action must respect the subsidiarity principle.

3.2 Subsidiarity: necessity of EU action

Intervention at EU level is justified in view of the scale and cross-border aspects of the problem (cfr. more details below), the impact of soil degradation across the Union as well as the risks for the environment, economy and society. Coordinated measures by all Member States are necessary to achieve the vision to have all soils healthy by 2050 as set out in the Soil Strategy for 2030, and to secure the provision of ecosystem services across the EU by the soil in the long-term. Unless the current degradation of our soils is rapidly reversed, our food system will become less productive and increasingly vulnerable to the changing climate and reliant on resource intensive external inputs. 47  Actions of Member States by themselves have proven to be insufficient to reverse the situation, since the degradation trend is continuing and even deteriorating (cfr. trends and outlook in section 2.1.2). As stated by the European Environment Agency, the lack of a comprehensive and coherent policy framework for protecting Europe’s land and soil resources is a key gap that reduces the effectiveness of the existing incentives and measures and limits Europe’s ability to achieve its objectives. Europe is not well on track to protect its soils. Given that some aspects of soil health are only fractionally covered by EU legislation, additional EU action is needed to complement existing requirements and to fill policy gaps in a holistic and integrated manner. Indeed, the EU has taken in the past already legislative action with a fragmented impact on soil health (e.g. through policies on agriculture, water, climate, industry, etc.). The policy options will be developed in chapter 5 in full respect of the subsidiarity principle with different degrees of flexibility for Member States and different intensities of EU intervention. The subsidiarity principle is analysed below and more extensively in the subsidiarity grid in the separate Staff Working Document accompanying the proposal and this impact assessment. Whilst the scale of the problem is established in Section 2, the cross-border aspects of the problem are particularly relevant for subsidiarity and therefore further explained here.

Cross-border aspects and impacts of soil degradation

The drivers and impacts of the problem exceed country borders and reduce the provision of ecosystem services throughout the EU and its neighbours. Soil degradation is often wrongly considered as a purely local issue while transboundary impacts are underestimated. 48  Healthy soils are essential to tackle global societal challenges. Soils play a key role in the nutrient, carbon and water cycles, and these processes are clearly not constrained by physical and political borders.

Soil health influences whether a soil emits or sequesters carbon, and therefore, the absence of effective measures to adequately tackle degradation in one country, undermines climate change mitigation and adaptation actions in other Member States and EU efforts to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Every year mineral soils under cropland are losing around 7.4 million tonnes of carbon. Peatland drainage in Europe alone emits around 5% of total EU greenhouse gas emissions. Soil degradation due to unsustainable management practises (e.g. sealing, intensive agricultural and forest management practices that cause loss of soil organic matter, compaction and erosion) in one country can significantly increase the flooding risks across borders and the vulnerability of a whole region to extreme weather events.

Off-site costs of erosion are estimated to be much higher than on-site effects. Soil particles eroded by water are transported downstream and across borders through the soil-sediment-water system and increase turbidity. This reduces water quality and increases sedimentation and costs for water treatment. For nautical reasons, the Port of Rotterdam dredges every year millions m³ of excessive sediments, half of which are brought down by the Rhine as an effect of unsustainable soil erosion upstream. Soil loss to riverine systems is about 15% of the on-site erosion in the EU. The average cost of sediments removal is 15-20 euro per m3. Removing sediments due to erosion costs about 1.5 – 2.3 billion euro per year. Of the approximately 100 transboundary river basins in the EU, 25% have identified soil erosion as an important issue (due to agricultural practices). Sediments washed away by soil erosion in one country can block dams or damage infrastructure such as harbours in other countries. Other off-site and thus potential cross-border effects of soil erosion by water include increased risk of landslides, loss of biodiversity, adverse effects on the generation of electricity, decreased food supply and increased prices. Tackling the problem in the country of origin by erosion prevention and sustainable soil management is always the most cost-efficient solution.

Excessive use and run-off of nutrients from soils can lead to cross-border eutrophication of water bodies and seas. Oversupply of nutrients in agricultural land around the Baltic Sea is a major environmental pressure on groundwater aquifers and the marine ecosystem. Harmful chemicals and heavy metals enter the Baltic Sea via multiple sources and pathways, including from wastewater treatment plants, leaching from landfills and filling material, inappropriate spreading of sewage sludge, atmospheric deposition of industrial emissions, and agricultural use of fertilisers and pesticides. More than 97% of the Baltic Sea suffers from eutrophication caused by multiple countries. Europe is a global nitrogen hotspot with high nitrogen export through rivers to coastal waters, and 10 % of the global nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. 49  

Erosion by wind transports soil particles and the harmful chemical substances attached to them across long distances and borders, e.g. the wind-driven transport of glyphosate and aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA, the metabolite of glyphosate). Similarly, anthropogenic emissions of air pollutants and subsequent deposition of heavy metals are known to cause negative effects on chemical and biological processes in soils. Wind erosion affects the transboundary semi-arid areas of the Mediterranean region as well as the temperate climate areas of the northern and central European countries. Transport of contaminated sediments in transboundary river basins and coastal waters can have adverse effects on the environment, human health and the economy across borders. Action is needed not only on source control, but also to deal with ‘legacy’ contamination where contaminated sediment is likely to be remobilized during extreme events (e.g. floods) and because such events are likely to become more frequent.

Contaminants introduced to soil leach into ground, surface, marine and coastal waters, leading to contaminated drinking and bathing water, and finally ending in the sea. Transboundary aquifers can become polluted by soil contamination. It is therefore important to prevent and remediate at the source, otherwise costs to restore environmental quality have to be borne by another Member State. A known example of transboundary contamination is the Campine area in Flanders and the Netherlands, where heavy metals were emitted by the Belgian non-ferro industry and zinc ashes were used as filling material. Atmospheric deposition of heavy metals also causes negative cross-border effects on chemical and biological processes in soils. Even though emissions were drastically reduced thanks to strong EU air policy, the impact of historical deposition can last very long. Lead and cadmium concentrations from deposition decreased in soil upper layers but were transferred in deeper soil layers. Heavy metals continue to leach from soil to water long time after the depositions are reduced. Another example of cross-border effects is the large-scale PFAS contamination caused by a chemical producer in Antwerp, that is mobile and crossing the border with the Netherlands.

Soil contamination can immediately become a cross-border threat to food safety  in Europe and globally. Contamination of agricultural soils can lead to transboundary risks when resulting in food contamination that subsequently circulates freely in the EU internal market. E.g. dietary exposure to cadmium exceeds the tolerable level more than twice for a significant number of Europeans, including children. Food from agricultural products is the main source of cadmium exposure for the general, non-smoking population in the EU, and fertilisation with phosphate fertilisers is by far the main cause of cadmium contamination of European agricultural soils.

As stated in the recent Staff Working Document on the drivers of food security, the food supply chain is internationally highly interconnected and disruptions have increasingly been of transboundary nature. 50 This is reinforced by the fact that the EU is an important global player on international food markets. Since 95% of our food is produced on soils, 51  soil degradation and health is a driver that has a direct impact on food security and the cross-border food markets. No country in the EU is fully self-sufficient in terms of food security. The Global Food Security index 52 shows that the situation varies between Member States, but even the best performing EU countries still depend on soils beyond their borders and import for the provision of food. Food production, in combination with trade determines the food supply. 53  

The loss of capacity for food production due to unhealthy soils has an obvious effect on the overall food security of the EU and globally, with a view to the growing global population and EU’s strong agri-food export orientation. As the balance between food supply and food demand determines the price, soil health is also directly linked to food prices. In 2021, 66% of the cereals produced in the EU came from only five countries. Decreasing soil health in these countries affects the availability of these products within the entire internal market and beyond. Agriculture in the EU is losing around 0.43% of crop productivity annually (with an annual cost of 1.25 billion euro) from water erosion alone. Soil degradation causes losses of almost 3 million tonnes of wheat and 0.6 million tonnes of maize per year in the EU. Heavy agricultural equipment deployed in wet conditions can reduce, through soil compaction, long-term crop yields by 2.5-15%. Soil sealing caused a loss of 0.81% of agricultural production in 19 EU countries between 1990 and 2006, the equivalent of 6 million tons of wheat. Salinisation leads to decreased biomass production of a further 10 million hectares per year.

The cross-border aspects of soil degradation call for close cooperation with EU neighbours, but this cannot be done properly unless the matter is first addressed within the EU. European policy should protect citizens of a given country from the harmful consequences of natural resources management practices in another country for which they are not responsible. 54

3.3 Subsidiarity: added value of EU action

Coordinated action is needed to deliver on EU and global commitments that rely on soil health, and this initiative would allow for increased certainty for meeting these objectives and for reduced costs of doing so. The European and international commitments (e.g. under UNCCD, UNFCCC, CBD, SDGs, UNEA, etc.), adopted by the EU and its Member States are currently not matched by a corresponding level of action.

Working at European scale is essential, as currently soil protection policies vary markedly from one Member State to another. Lower environmental requirements in some Member States may lead to distortions in the internal market and unfair competition among businesses. Some Member States have sophisticated soil protection policies and rules, others do not have provisions beyond those derived from EU non-soil specific policies. Some Member States have put more general soil protection legislation in place (e.g. AT, BE, DE, NL, SK), more specific agricultural or cultivation acts (e.g. BG, HR, SI, CZ, PL, DK), specific legislation for contamination and remediation (e.g. AT, FI, BE) or the sub-soil (e.g. LV, NL). Member States having less soil-protecting policy instruments in place are often those suffering from high pressures on soil, in particular in southern countries where depletion of soil organic carbon, soil erosion and the risk of desertification are the highest. Differences between national rules can lead to very different obligations for economic operators, different cost bases from one Member State to another and an uneven playing field (e.g. due to higher investigation or remediation costs).

There are considerable differences between the efforts that Member States deploy to identify and remediate (potentially) contaminated sites, e.g. Bulgaria has only registered 26 potentially contaminated sites, compared to more than 350.000 in Germany. Some Member States have fairly effective soil investigation schemes and remediation rates, others only remediate few sites per year, resulting in little progress in the management of contaminated sites. Remediation costs are normally borne by the polluting company, so this means that businesses in certain Member States are disadvantaged compared to companies in countries with looser regulation.

Externalities from soil degradation are unequally internalized by landowners, managers, operators and users and this would be reflected in the prices of the products they source on these soils. However, soil degradation results in lower crop yields, higher food prices and decreases the availability of agricultural land. Reduced soil fertility increases the cost of inputs for farmers and reduces their competitiveness in the longer run. These can distort the competition in the internal market. The proper functioning of the single market requires addressing the cause of these imbalances, i.e. ensuring soil health.

The Soil Strategy aims to have all EU soil ecosystems in healthy condition by 2050 and already noted that this will require decisive changes in this decade. By 2050 protection, sustainable use, and restoration of soil should become the norm. This requires immediate legislative action to fill the gap on soil at EU level. A Soil Health Law would increase legal certainty for European companies and provide clarity on the joint principles and long-term targets for soil health across Member States. Soil health improvement requires continued action which means constant investment and policy stability. Less subject to short-term political perturbation, the EU can provide the long-term dimension in a different way to national governments. Unified environmental norms at EU level bring clarity and certainty for the single market. Such a common vision and legal framework would also stimulate the development of innovative solutions that could strengthen the export of European expertise and technologies to non-EU countries.

Furthermore, the cross-border impacts of the problem, including the pressures on soil, mean that addressing the issue at European scale will also allow for synergies and more efficient action than if at Member State level alone. The process of regulating soil health is complex and requires scientific expertise. This could partly explain why some Member States have not yet taken action. A significant advantage of legislative EU action is that it partly eliminates the need for Member States to carry out their own scientific analyses, stakeholder consultations and impact assessments, with likely substantial savings on administrative costs. Some Members States have not yet taken advanced action on soil health, because soil degradation is often perceived as a hidden threat and complex problem with many links to other policy domains. EU-level action is needed to ensure a consistent approach across the EU and beyond and would allow for significant sharing of best practice and also to support soil monitoring by developing advanced remote sensing services and providing assistance to the Member States in need.

Further analysis of subsidiarity is provided for the policy options in subsequent Chapters and in the separate Staff Working Document with the subsidiarity grid.

Views of stakeholders on the need for EU action

The feedback received in response to the call for evidence ‘soil health – protecting, sustainably managing and restoring soil’ 55  (see Annex 2 for more analytical detail) revealed support for an EU initiative across responding stakeholders. 149 of the 189 (79%) replies support or strongly support an EU Soil Health Law. All responding research organizations (n=11), NGOs (n=39) and public authorities (n=9) supported it, while 47 of the 71 responding business associations and organisations, did so. Qualitative analysis showed that some businesses emphasized the importance of soil monitoring and the linkages with EU water policy and favoured the application of a risk-based approach to address issues with soil contamination in the EU. Some businesses voiced concerns about the risk of double regulation and additional administrative burdens. Others would prefer a non-binding approach at EU level and demand that the Soil Health Law leaves enough flexibility to take in to account the diversity and local condition of the soil (no one size fits all). 

88% of the 5 782 respondents to the online public consultation 56  replied that the causes of soil degradation are currently not sufficiently or not at all addressed at EU level. Regarding the content of the Soil Health Law, respondents found it most important to regulate requirements for the sustainable management of soil (r=4 961) and to impose an obligation of result for Member States to achieve healthy soils (r=4 954).

In general, Member States express their support to the Commission in stepping up efforts to better protect soils and stay committed to reaching land degradation neutrality. All Member States welcomed the new EU Soil Strategy and are prepared to make progress towards the objective of ‘zero net land take’ by 2050. The Council confirmed it remains determined to work with the Parliament and the Commission on soil protection and on any emerging initiatives that would be proposed in this regard. In general, Member States ask for sufficient flexibility to adapt the EU framework to the national conditions and to respect the subsidiarity and proportionality principles.

Regional and local authorities have called the Commission through the European Committee of the Regions to propose a European Directive specifically for agricultural soils and have also welcomed the new Soil Strategy and the announcement of the Soil Health Law. They are of the view that supporting soil protection through a European framework is crucial to move towards climate neutrality, biodiversity restoration, zero pollution and a sustainable food system. At the same time regional and local authorities ask for flexibility in the implementation because of the regional differences in terms of spatial planning, landscape, soil composition and soil use.

4Objectives: What is to be achieved?

4.1 The intervention logic

Figure 4‑1: intervention logic

4.2 General objectives

The general objective is to achieve healthy soils across the EU by 2050, ensuring that EU soils can supply multiple ecosystem services at a scale sufficient to meet environmental, societal and economic needs, and reducing soil pollution to levels no longer considered harmful to human health and the environment. This objective stems from the vision of the EU Soil Strategy for 2030 that by 2050, all EU soil ecosystems are in healthy condition and are thus more resilient, which will require very decisive changes in this decade. This is also in line with the long-term objective of the 7th and 8th Environmental Action Programmes to live well, within the planetary boundaries by 2050.

4.3 Specific objectives

The specific objectives to respond to the two sub-problems are:

a.To ensure that sufficient data, information and knowledge on soil health and management is available to stakeholders and an adequate governance on soil health is in place.

b.To restore unhealthy soils (including contaminated sites) and ensure sustainable management of EU soils, whenever possible.

There is a close relationship between these two specific objectives. Putting in place a reliable monitoring and assessment system, producing a solid knowledge base is essential in managing soils. Indeed, taking adequate and effective action to achieve healthy soils requires data, information and knowledge, in particular to account for the high variability of soil types, climatic conditions and land uses. In turn, the information coming from sustainable soil management on the ground informs and helps calibrating the monitoring and governance mechanisms. Furthermore, as the scale of the problem is significant, it is essential to start taking measures ensuring soil health (specific objective b) as soon as possible, so that the general objective is attainable.

4.4Synergies and trade-offs with other objectives

Restoring unhealthy soils and avoiding their degradation through sustainable soil management would contribute to the achievement of other EU Green Deal objectives:

-healthy content in soil organic carbon would contribute significantly to climate neutrality;

-healthy, and therefore fertile and resilient soils would contribute significantly to the food security and in addressing the request for biomass production, in particular in the long term due to the expected higher resilience to climate change;

-healthy soils, not exposing humans and the environment to unacceptable risks due to soil contamination, would contribute to the zero pollution ambition;

-healthy soils would contribute to achieving good ecosystem condition, addressing the loss of biodiversity.

Furthermore, ensuring sufficient data on soil health will provide a needed basis to monitor forest soils and to monitor the progress in achieving the targets related to soil set in the NRL proposal and in LULUCF.

Potential short-term trade-offs depend on specific options and practices applied – see analysis in 6.3.7.

5Policy options

5.1 What is the baseline from which options are assessed?

The baseline scenario is detailed in Annex 8 and describes how the current situation is expected to evolve over time without additional policy action.

The baseline assumes the implementation of European Green Deal policies and of the other actions announced in the Soil Strategy for 2030 (with the exception of the Soil Health Law). Beyond that, the baseline also assumes that other existing and planned EU, global and Member State policies relevant to soil health are implemented and remain in force.

The baseline therefore includes:

·The implementation of recent policy reforms (e.g. revised LULUCF Regulation, new CAP) and proposals under discussion (e.g. NRL, Certification of Carbon Removal Regulation).

·The implementation of other relevant existing and planned EU and global policies and legislation. 

·The non-binding actions for the Commission and Member States set in the EU Soil Strategy for 2030.

·The implementation of national policies relevant for soil health.

5.1.1The contributions of recent initiatives

Over the last years and months, the Commission has proposed a number of initiatives in the frame of the Union’s policy on climate and biodiversity that are very relevant for soils. The new CAP is also expected to contribute to enhance soil health. The potential contributions of the NRL, LULUCF Regulation, CAP and the carbon removal are summarised in Table 5 ‑1  and  Table 5 ‑2 . Error! Reference source not found.

Over the last years and months, the Commission has proposed a number of initiatives in the frame of the Union’s policy on climate and biodiversity that are very relevant for soils. The new CAP is also expected to contribute to enhance soil health. The potential contributions of the NRL, LULUCF Regulation, CAP and the carbon removal are summarised in  Table 5 ‑1 and  Table 5 ‑2 .

Firstly, the proposal for the NRL sets EU nature restoration targets to restore degraded ecosystems (i.e. with high importance for biodiversity), and especially those with the most potential to remove and store carbon and to prevent and reduce the impact of natural disasters. The NRL proposal contains a number of provisions directly relevant to soils: obligation for Member States to put in place restoration measures for organic soils in agricultural use constituting drained peatlands, obligations for MS to set two targets, to achieve a satisfactory level of stock of organic carbon in cropland mineral soils and in forest ecosystems. Indirect contributions on soil health are also expected from the restoration measures of terrestrial ecosystems (24% of EU land concerned).

Secondly, under the proposal for amending the LULUCF Regulation, the European Commission proposed a separate land-based net removals target of -310 million tonnes of CO2 -equivalent by 2030. The EU-wide target is to be implemented through binding national targets for the LULUCF sector, requiring Member States to step up ambition for their land use policies.

Thirdly, the proposed Carbon Removal Regulation aims to facilitate the deployment of high-quality carbon removals through a voluntary Union certification framework with high climate and environmental integrity. Storing carbon in soil is an essential component of reaching climate neutrality. At the same time, carbon removals constitute a new business model in the voluntary market with carbon credits. This initiative is instrumental in ensuring soil’s capacity to absorb and store carbon.

Fourthly, the new CAP includes several mandatory requirements for environmental and climate conditions (called Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions, GAECs) to be respected by the farmers that receive CAP income support. Some of these GAECs are linked to soil management practices and are expected to contribute to enhance soil health. In addition, the CAP provides support to farmers who commit to voluntary measures. Some of those are also of relevance for soils, such as certain eco-schemes or targeted agri-environmental and climate measures (AECM) or investment measures under the second pillar of the CAP (rural development policy).

The contribution of these initiatives to address the different soils threats has been assessed for the different soils (agriculture, forest and other). The major expected contribution (i.e. NRL, revision of LULUCF, Carbon Removal and new CAP) concerns the loss of soil organic carbon. For SOC in organic soils, the attainment of the targets set in the proposed NRL is sufficient to reach the corresponding criteria for healthy soils. The revised LULUCF and the carbon removal Regulation will incentivize soil management measures that strengthen the capacity of soils to preserve and capture CO2. Regarding mineral soils, these initiatives if fully implemented partially addresses the problem.

As regards soil erosion on agricultural soils, the new CAP includes some safeguards, especially by two GAECs on soil erosion risk management and soil cover, and certain targeted voluntary measures. This may for example decrease the extent of arable land in the EU left as bare soil without any vegetation cover during winter, which were estimated to be 23 % in 2016. However, due to different priorities and implementing requirements across the Member States it is estimated these instruments would not be suitable to cover the problem to full extent.

Soil compaction is not expected to be specifically addressed by the above-mentioned initiatives.

Positive impacts on the excess of nutrients on agriculture soils are expected from the GAEC on soil cover and crop rotation, as well as some voluntary measures where available. However, not all agriculture soils are concerned and there is no binding target to be achieved. Furthermore, the target on water ecosystems as well as the restoration measures on terrestrial habitats under the proposed NRL is also expected to contribute to the reduction of the excess of nutrients in soils. However, this would concern a maximum of 24% of all soils. Hence it is estimated that a large gap would remain.

On soil acidification, the target on restoration of terrestrial habitats under the proposed NRL may contribute to reduce soil acidification. However, this would concern a maximum of 24% of all soils. Hence it is estimated that a large gap would remain.

On soil salinization, the rewetting target under the proposed NRL may probably contribute locally to reduce soil salinization in some agricultural soils. However, only an indirect contribution is expected. Therefore, a large gap would remain.

On the loss of soil biodiversity, some eco-schemes and AECM under the CAP are expected to have some positive impacts on agriculture soils. However, due to the voluntary nature of these measures and the great variation in availability across Member States, the potential of the CAP to fully address this problem is limited and it is estimated that only a share of agricultural soil would be impacted. The restoration measures under the proposed NRL would also contribute to address this problem.

On water retention capacity, the measures under the proposed NRL and LULUCF revision aiming to increase the soil organic carbon would improve the soil’s capacity to retain water. However, there are no specific targets on the soil’s capacity to retain water.

On soil sealing and artificialization, prevention and remediation of soil contamination, the non-deterioration of habitats under the proposed NRL may prevent from soil sealing and artificialization. Besides this, no further major contribution is expected from the four initiatives.

In conclusion, these recent initiatives will require Member States to take actions that benefit, inter alia, soil health. However, they only partially address the objectives of this soil health initiative, because they approach soils from another angle (such as biodiversity and climate neutrality angles as far as NRL, revised LULUCF and carbon removal regulation are concerned). The (soil) targets in the NRL proposal focus on the carbon sequestering potential, which is only one of the many ecosystem services provided by the soil, and only have limited coverage on mineral cropland soils and organic soils, specifically in agricultural and forest ecosystems. As it was already foreseen in the NRL proposal, 57 additional targets for soil health in all terrestrial ecosystem types would be introduced in a more complete and holistic manner at a later stage through this soil health initiative. Similarly, the target for the removal of carbon from the atmosphere by the LULUCF sector, includes mineral and organic soils, but uniquely focusses on the carbon cycle. The LULUCF Regulation creates incentives for improving land management in the EU, but only in view of achieving land-based climate neutrality, since the Regulation does not address other physical, chemical or biological aspects of soil health, than soil organic carbon stocks. The new CAP is also expected to contribute to soil health for the agricultural soils concerned. A specific objective (SO) has been introduced with the aim to preserve natural resources including soil (SO 5). Three GAECs with relevance to soil contribute to this objective and Member States were asked to design further interventions to address soil degradation causes. It is important to note, however, that a) the CAP is a funding mechanism for those farmers seeking support and does not regulate or incentivises farmers who do not participate under its framework; b) the final design of CAP interventions depends on Member States situation and priorities, leading to a wide range of the extent to which the CAP contributes to soil health aspects (cfr. Annex 8 section 1.4 on result indicators); c) the financial budget dedicated to environmental issues must also sufficiently support many other environmental aspects, such as biodiversity loss or reduced use of pesticides, therefore causing a competition for resources between the targeted aspects; and d) since the CAP addresses a large number of potential beneficiaries and a large physical area, there is a possible danger that support is spread too thinly to have a significant effect. 58 In some cases, specific needs could be better addressed when more accurate data and subsequent indicators would be available, to which the Soil Health Law could contribute significantly. 

For the sake of completeness, the following initiatives were also added in  Table 5 ‑1 Error! Reference source not found. :

-The proposal for a regulation on the sustainable use of plant protection products and amending Regulation (EU) 2021/2115 (COM(2022)0196 final)

-The proposal for a revision of the Industrial Emissions Directive (COM(2022)156)

-The future Communication on managing the nutrient cycle for a resilient future - reaping the benefits of an integrated approach (INMAP)

5.1.2Contribution of existing EU legislation (see Annex 6 for more details)

Existing EU policies make positive contributions to the improvement of soil health but will not be sufficient to achieve the vision of the Soil Strategy to have all soils healthy by 2050 because they do not comprehensively address all the drivers of soil degradation and therefore significant gaps remain as explained in detail in chapter 2 and Annex 6. Existing policies have not been able to prevent that 60-70% of soils in the EU are not healthy and that soil health is still deteriorating in the EU.

Annex 6 includes a gap analysis to show how existing initiatives do not fully enable the achievement of the objectives identified in this impact assessment. At the same time, the link with other initiatives creates an opportunity for synergies: the Soil Health Law can build on efforts already established in other soil-related areas and can support other initiatives through a stronger governance framework and the provision of more harmonised data.

The gap is represented visually in the following table Table 5 ‑ 3 . Further explanations on the legislative gap are provided in section 2 of Annex 6.

Table 5‑3: legislative gap

5.1.3EU Soil Strategy for 2030

Section 3 of Annex 8 lists the non-binding policy initiatives under the EU Soils Strategy that have been considered and assessed their expected impacts on the baseline scenario.

5.1.4Existing Member States legislation

Section 5 of Annex 8 describes and assesses the contribution of existing Member States legislation

5.2 Description of the policy options

The description of the policy options is done through five key building blocks (see the columns in Error! Reference source not found. Error! Reference source not found. ), responding to the two specific objectives and representing the key areas of intervention. The building blocks on soil health and soil districts, monitoring and identification of contaminated soils respond to specific objective A. The building blocks on sustainable soil management and restoration respond to specific objective B.

There are two factors that need to be taken into account for detailing how the obligations would be defined: the level of harmonization at EU level of the monitoring and action framework, and the level of flexibility provided to Member States to adapt to specific local conditions.

Option 1 has binding requirements only for monitoring, therefore it is relevant under building blocks 1, 2 and 4 only. Options 2, 3 and 4 have been developed for each building block, from a more flexible to a more harmonized approach, specifying how the obligations would be implemented.

The coherence in the combination of the options from the building blocks has been assessed as well.

Block 1: soil health definition and soil governance

Definition of soil health addressing the key aspects of soil degradation

Soil health can be described with a degree of accuracy by a set of relevant parameters. To establish such parameters, it is necessary to consider all the key types of soil degradations, and ensure that, for each of them, at least one indicator or “descriptor” is identified. A list of soil descriptors corresponding to the identified aspects of soil degradations is included in Table 7 ‑ 1 . The list includes descriptors for the excess of nutrients in soil and indicators for the extent of land take and soil sealing. This preferred option and in particular the descriptor for soil organic carbon is aligned with and refers to the target in the NRL proposal for organic soils in agricultural use constituting drained peatlands. No additional organic carbon target is set for organic soils. As regards agricultural (only cropland mineral soils) and forest ecosystems, the Member States are required in the NRL to set a satisfactory level for the stock of organic carbon. The soil health definition provides a solution to the Member States for setting ranges for SOC to ensure minimal soil functionality, supported by recent scientific conclusions; furthermore, the definition extends the applicability of the range beyond cropland mineral soils in agricultural ecosystems and forest ecosystems to all managed mineral soils.

Table 7 ‑ 1 The definition of soil health has important implications for the sustainable soil management and restoration measures as it determines the parameters to be followed to maintain soil in healthy status or to be met when restoring soils to healthy condition. The more precise these values, or narrower the ranges are set at EU level, the less flexibility for the Member State. Conversely, less specific values or broader ranges allows more flexibility to the national level to accommodate specific local conditions etc., but also make the objectives less ambitious. This is an important factor that distinguishes between the options analysed.   

In order to assess the level of soil health in a given area, the resulting set of descriptors are to be measured on a soil sample taken in the field (except soil erosion which is estimated for the whole area); the values of the descriptors will describe the soil condition for the specific point where the soil sample has been taken. To do so, it is necessary to evaluate the variability of soil characteristics in that area, which implies taking a sufficient number of geographically explicit samples to be able to extrapolate from point assessment to area assessment with a sufficient level of statistical assurance. This is a typical problem solved by the scientific discipline of geostatistics, which is able to identify, for a given area, the best sampling density for providing a desired level of assurance that soils in a certain area are healthy (or estimate the percentage of the area where soils are not healthy). The denser the grid, the more representative the information received, but the higher the cost of the assessment. Consequently, it is important to strike the right balance between limiting costs and obtaining accurate information about soil health.

As land take is one of the main impacts on soil condition, as explained in chapter 2.1, a common EU definition would provide a degree of harmonisation to the monitoring of land take towards the common objectives.

Soil governance

The assessment of soil health in an area is best done (lower costs and higher statistical assurance) if this area has characteristics of homogeneity in terms of soil type and composition, climatic conditions and land use. This and the need to manage the related tasks require the establishment of sufficiently homogeneous zones (districts) within a Member State where to assess soil health, and which management would be assigned to an authority. Given the great variability of soils in the EU, a reasonable compromise between homogeneity of soil condition in such a district and a manageable number of soil districts is needed. It is at soil district level that soils are best assessed and monitored, and local actions taken to achieve healthy soils.

Options

In Option 2, Member States are given the flexibility to decide the values for a selected set of descriptors for defining the target soil. However, this will result in very different level of ambition in the Member States which would undermine the objectives pursued, considering that the soil assessment and management is based on these parameters. Second, a minimal governance structure has to be put in place as explained above to make sure that soils are assessed and managed. Option 2 includes an obligation to set up soil districts and appoint authorities to manage these but sets no requirement on the form or level. In Option 4, at the other side of the spectrum, soil health values for all descriptors and soil districts are determined at EU level as precisely as possible taking into account parameters like the soil types and land use, for maximum harmonisation. This would pose challenges in reaching an agreement as indicated also in the consultation of the Member States, for example finding a common denominator for soil pollutants or biodiversity parameters. In between option 2 and 4, option 3 defines general criteria for determining soil districts (such as having to cover the whole territory) but the determination is left to Member States and defines soil health values for a selected set of descriptors, based on available scientific knowledge that already takes into account the variability of soil condition. The values selected are those for which an out-of-range value would mean a critical loss of ecosystem services. For the remaining descriptors setting the values would be left to the Member States if this can be done and depends on the local specific conditions (for example water retention) or will set no value if this is difficult at this stage (acidification) – see Table 7 ‑ 1 . Option 1 focuses on monitoring only and can rely on any of the choices above, taking into account the implications.

Block 2: soil health monitoring

Soil health monitoring builds on the existing national soil monitoring systems, on the work done for the EU Soil Observatory and on the knowledge available from science, as assessed in the recent EEA report on soil monitoring in Europe. 59 In the future, soil health monitoring will be able to profit from new knowledge from relevant projects financed under the Soil Mission of the Horizon Europe Programme. 60  A monitoring system for soil health would profit to the requirement of monitoring and reporting of soil organic carbon under the revised LULUCF Regulation and the proposal for the certification of carbon removal, to the requirement of monitoring soil organic carbon stocks in cropland stemming from the Nature Restoration Law proposal and to the Forest Monitoring Law.

Monitoring and assessment of soil health

While soil monitoring has been carried out at both national and EU level, a comparable, coherent and sufficient gathering of soil data needs to be put in place to have a meaningful situation of the soils conditions everywhere in the EU, able to inform and support soil management. LUCAS Soil (part of the periodical LUCAS survey funded by the Commission) could serve as basis for this, as it is the only in-situ soil survey that provides harmonised soil measurements across the EU and can be the reference for comparability of national measurements. LUCAS sampling points are selected from a 2km×2km grid that covers the European territory through a stratified random procedure, which should ensure that the results are representative for all land cover types at NUTS2 (basic regions or province level). However, the current design of LUCAS Soil is not sufficient to adequately assess soil in a representative way at more local level, given the large variability of soil types, climatic conditions and land uses, and thus to inform adequate soil restoration actions. Therefore, a common feature of all options of this building block is to strengthen LUCAS Soil and to create a clear legal basis for it, in synergy with national monitoring systems. LUCAS soil is already collaborating with interested Member States to ensure access to sites (e.g. contact landowners, collection of land management details, etc.), to supplement LUCAS Soil with national monitoring data, to cross-validate results and to improve the harmonisation and comparability between national and EU-wide aggregated indicators.

A key aspect of harmonisation of soil data, and consequent comparability of data at EU level and the possibility for integrating national and LUCAS data, is the “transfer function” between the two different methods of measurement. The Horizon 2020 Joint Research Programme EJP SOIL, involving 24 Member States, is proceeding to validate some transfer functions for the measurements of soil parameters by taking double samples and measuring each with national and LUCAS soil methods. Remote sensing technologies such as Copernicus and related digital solutions have a limited application for soil currently, but already provide key data and information (such as land use and land cover, soil moisture) to complement ground measurements. They provide as well key data for estimating the extent of land take and soil sealing. Recent progress in proximal soil sensing and remote sensing technologies, supported by the development of sensors and computing capacity, facilitate predictive mapping of different soil physicochemical properties (carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, salinity) with higher accuracy and resolution. Support will be needed from EEA (in cooperation with other institutions as relevant) to provide indicators on soil health based on remote sensing data such as from Copernicus services, for the relevant parameters. A harmonized approach would allow the Commission to provide such services to Member States.

Options

As knowing the condition of soils is essential for soil management and the knowledge gap is significant, all the options rely on an obligation to monitor and assess the conditions of soils and the net land take based on the definitions under block 1. LUCAS Soil uses a list of international standard methods to measure soil parameters. However, Member States could use their own methods (option 2), which would then require converting national measurements into LUCAS-compatible values to ensure comparability at EU level. In this case harmonisation may be limited by the compatibility of these methods for some of the descriptors. Alternatively, the EU methods, based on LUCAS, could be made mandatory for all Member States (option 4). This would provide a high level of harmonisation but requires a major change of methods by the Member States. In-between these two options, option 3 would recommend the use of the methods in the EU list but would allow Member States to use their methods provided that scientifically validated transfer functions would be available for each descriptor. Option 1 focuses on monitoring only and can rely on any of the choices above.

Block 3: sustainable soil management 

Using soil sustainably

To achieve healthy soils, it is necessary to ensure that soils are managed in accordance with sustainable soil management principles targeting the types of degradation, by using practices that maintain or increase the soil’s capacity to provide ecosystem services on a long-term basis. This requires that the land users gradually and systematically adopt, if not already the case, practices that do not degrade the soil, i.e., that do not cause loss of soil organic carbon, erosion, compaction, salinization, contamination, etc. as described in chapter 2.1. While some initiatives already support the transition to sustainable soil management (see chapter 5.1.2 and Annex 8, section 5), significant efforts are still needed by all Member States to support and ensure this transition on a broad scale.

While a sustainable management principle provides a baseline understanding of the requirements necessary to address one or more causes of soil degradation, a sustainable management practice describes a specific activity that should be applied to comply with that principle. For example, a sustainable management principle could be to avoid bare soils by establishing vegetative soil cover, which would prevent loss of soil organic carbon, excess nutrient content, soil erosion, desertification and loss of soil biodiversity. Appropriate practices could include cultivation of cover crops on arable land between growing seasons, mulching after forest fires, or encouraging groundcover vegetation on all soils of public parks and gardens. Which practices are most appropriate will depend on soil use and local conditions. Principles to be established for sustainable soil management would closely follow existing guidelines and scientific recommendations to best promote sustainable soil management. 61 These principles would target the relevant causes of soil degradations for agricultural, forestry and urban soils described in chapter 2.1 and would guide Member States in developing sustainable management practices, leaving them the choice of the latter.  

In the specific case of land use change, there would be one principle whereby a land take hierarchy 62  will be considered in the decision-making process, which is to first avoid soil deterioration and, if this is not possible, to minimise and compensate for it as much as possible. This would leave the choice on land use change in the hands of the Member States, but it would ensure that the impacts of land take and the options available will be considered along other relevant public interests.

Based on the principles of sustainable soil management, sustainable soil management practices would have to be defined according to the specific conditions, so that land managers can apply them to their soils. Table 7.3, chapter 7.1.2 provides examples of practices that are considered sustainable practices and avoid or minimise the risk of various soil degradation. It is important to note that depending on the condition of soil and their impact, not all of these practices would have to be applied at the same time. In addition to the practices listed in that table, an increased application of holistic land management systems, such as agroecological farming, agroforestry, organic farming, close to nature forestry etc., in particular is considered to contribute significantly to achieve healthy soils and prevent the deterioration of the soil health.

Options

In Option 2, an example of principles and practices would be provided in form of an indicative annex to the SHL. In Option 3, common management principles, as explained above, would be set at EU level, while the choice and implementation of specific practices would be left to Member States. Option 4, would, in addition to the common principles, include an obligation to implement certain specific management practices (e.g. integration of nitrogen fixing crops and cover crops in agricultural crop rotation, provision of undisturbed habitats for soil organisms, application of mulching after forest fires) applicable for specific types of soils and soil uses in the EU as well as a ban on certain harmful practices (such as the use of heavy machinery on water saturated soils). A staged approach and a flexible application of the non-deterioration principle would be necessary in any case to ensure that sustainable management is phased in in a measured way, to ensure on the one hand that measures that can be put in place are not unnecessarily delayed and on the other, that land managers are not subject to disproportionate costs and the necessary preparations and support are put in place.

Option 1 would not require obligations under this building block.   

Block 4: identification, registration, investigation and assessment of (potentially) contaminated sites

Assessing contaminated sites

Tackling the legacy of more than 200 years of industrialisation requires a systematic approach that starts with the identification of sites that are potentially or suspected to be contaminated because of historical or current activities with a high risk but also because of accidents or spills. The contaminated sites are treated distinctly since the concerned localised areas affected by high levels of pollution that require special methods of investigation and management, different from handling the rest of the soils. Out of the estimated 2,8 million potentially contaminated sites in the EU, only 1,38 million sites were registered and known in 2016, 98% of these in only 11 countries. The majority of the locations of potentially contaminated sites and the extent of the contamination are still largely unknown in the EU. Identifying, registering, investigating and assessing the risks of these sites is a prerequisite for soil remediation in block 5.

Figure 5‑1: registration of (potentially) contaminated sites

Potentially contaminated sites have to be identified and investigated to be able to confirm the presence or absence of contamination. The approach needs to define the conditions that trigger registration, investigation and sampling of potentially contaminated sites (e.g. based on environmental or building permits, systematic historical research, land use changes, transactions with (potentially) contaminated sites, or notifications by citizens). It is important to strike the right balance between maximizing the number of positive soil investigations that detect contamination and minimizing the number of superfluous or negative soil investigations. Member States also need to have a methodology in place to assess whether further action (risk reduction measures) is required on contaminated sites. The information needs to be registered, allowing to track progress over time and to prioritise further action.

Options

Option 2 applies a risk-based approach to estimate the magnitude and probability of the adverse effects of contaminated sites for human health and the environment, including the risk not to achieve good chemical and ecological status of water bodies required by EU water legislation. Under this option, Member States would be obliged to establish national procedures and methodologies for the assessment of the risks of contaminated sites and risk levels that they find un/acceptable, and they would have full flexibility in the way they would do so. On this basis, Member States would decide for contaminated sites whether further environmental measures are required, and if so, which type of action is needed.

Option 3 also introduces a risk-based approach and obliges Member States to define risk assessment procedures and methodologies, but there will be common EU guiding principles for the risk assessment procedure. These principles could be defined either immediately in the legal proposal or later through a comitology procedure in cooperation with Member States’ experts. Under option 3, aspects such as the impact on health and environment could feature among the common criteria, but the risk levels triggering action would be defined at national level.

Option 4 does not apply a risk-based approach for the management of contaminated sites. The need for further action would be systematically triggered if the presence of contaminants exceeds certain limit values established at EU level.

Option 1 could rely on options 2, 3 or 4. The requirements at EU level in building block 4 would only cover identification, investigation, assessment and registration of contaminated sites. Any measure to remediate contaminated sites would be taken based on the relevant national requirements, since option 1 does not include EU requirements on remediation and restoration.

Block 5: soil restoration and remediation 63

In building block 5, the policy options for the application of restoration measures for unhealthy soils are evaluated. Building on the conclusions of the gap analysis, dedicated soil restoration measures and specific targets additional to the measures already in place serving other objectives, but benefitting soil as well, are crucial to return the 60-70% unhealthy soils in the EU in good condition by 2050. Building block 5 is linked and works in close synergy with all the other blocks: the definition of soil health and the soil districts (BB1), monitoring and assessment of soil health (BB2), sustainable soil management (BB3) and the identification, investigation and assessment of contaminated sites (BB4).

Restoring unhealthy soils

To achieve the ‘vision’ of the Soil Strategy, that by 2050 all EU soil ecosystems should be in healthy condition 64 restoration measures need to be put in place in a coherent manner on the basis of the assessment of soils. Restoration measures have been shown to be very effective in addressing the soil degradation. An example of successful policy is the US Soil Conservation Act of 1935, which supported farmers to plant vegetation other than commercial crops in order to address the depletion of nutrients in soils linked to over-farming. After four years, wind-inflicted soil erosion was reduced by 65%. 65 Overall, wind erosion is estimated to impact up to 42 million hectares of European agricultural land. 66

This process would require reflection and consultations with the concerned stakeholders, which could rely on supporting documents (programmes of measures). Soil districts could be covered by individual programmes or by a single national programme. Alternatively, to these programmes, some intermediary objectives or targets could be envisaged, such as the identification of the soils in need of restoration and of the measures thereof for each district by certain intermediary dates. Nevertheless, as in the case of sustainable soil management (block 3), it is important to note that the restoration measures could be phased in gradually depending on their impact.

Sustainable soil management is closely linked to restoration. Sustainable soil management prevents that a healthy soil degrades by maintaining or enhancing the provision of ecosystem services, and therefore the need to restore in future. Restoration is an intentional activity aimed at reversing or re-establishing soil from a degraded state to a healthy condition. Therefore, restoration measures need to a large extent the results of the monitoring and assessment of the condition of the respective soils. The Member States could also report periodically or be transparent on the progress made in achieving soil health and towards the goal of no net land take by 2050.

Building on the identification of contaminated sites that require further action from building block 4, Member States would need to have in place a systematic approach to reduce and keep the risk of contaminated sites to acceptable levels, e.g. through risk reduction or soil remediation activities.

Options

In option 2, Member States would be entirely flexible to decide on the restoration measures that they put in place, since there would be no specific obligation to develop programmes of measures or to take measures as such – they would only be bound by the obligation to achieve healthy status for soils by 2050. The choice of the risk reduction and remediation measures for contaminated sites would also be left entirely to the Member States. Contaminated sites with unacceptable risks should undergo risk reduction measures, but not necessarily remediation, i.e. they can choose not to remove the contaminants but contain their impacts so that they do not represent an unacceptable risk. Member States would have the possibility to derogate (no opinion from the Commission would be required before granting derogations) from the obligation to have all soils healthy by 2050, when it is not technically feasible or the costs would be disproportionate to restore them. Some categories of unhealthy soils, that could fall under such derogations are:

·soils that are sealed or heavily modified;

·soils that have in natural condition characteristics that could be considered as unhealthy, but that represent specific habitats for biodiversity or landscape features.

In option 3, Member States would be obliged to take restoration measures, subject to derogations, but would be left the choice and form of the programme of measures and the measures themselves. The measures would be revised if the monitoring and assessment of soil health comes to this conclusion. The EU could establish some general minimum criteria for the programme of measures that Member States should put in place, e.g.:

·Outcome of the monitoring and assessment of soil health, based on:

osoil health definition and ranges of the descriptors;

osoil health parameters to monitor (including net land take);

oprogress in the management of contaminated sites from the national registers;

·Analysis of the pressures on soil health, including from climate change;

·Measures to apply sustainable soil management practices and restoration measures;

·Legislative, policy and budgetary actions taken or to be taken at national level to improve soil health, including also the systematic approach that will be put in place to identify and manage contaminated sites.

It could be required to inform or consult the public on the content of the programme of measures. Contaminated sites with unacceptable risks would need to be remediated as a preference by reducing or removing the contaminant load and source, and not by risk reduction measures that do not address the root of the environmental problem (such as containment, physical barriers, land use restriction or fencing). Prioritisation and planning of the remediation measures for contaminated sites would be left entirely to the Member States in this scenario. Derogations from the obligation remain possible when it is not technically feasible or the costs would be disproportionate to restore them. No opinion from the Commission would be required before granting derogations.

In Option 4, the content of the programmes of measures would be harmonised with an extensive template that needs to be filled in. Measures would need to be selected from a mandatory list in an annex of the Soil Health Law or in delegated acts. Such a list of measures could differentiate between e.g. climatic conditions, land use or soil type, to adapt the restoration practice to local conditions. Member States could derogate from the obligation to have all soils healthy by 2050 based on an opinion from the Commission, as required under other environmental legislation 67  to ensure a harmonised approach. Member States would also have an obligation to have a scheme in place for the liability or responsibility for the remediation of historical and orphan soil contamination. Remediation measures that reduce the contaminant concentrations would be mandatory. Member States should prioritise and plan the management and remediation of contaminated sites based on common EU criteria and intermediary targets for progress. Option 1 would not require obligations under this building block.   

5.3Options discarded at an early stage

Policy option 1 addresses sub-problem A (“Data, information, knowledge and common governance on soil health and management are insufficient”) by envisaging a “monitoring only” option to first focus on improving the knowledge base, collecting additional data and information, and strengthen the governance on soil health. Option 1 could represent part of the first phase of a staged approach, where legislative measures on the sustainable use and restoration of soil health would be proposed in a second phase, after the first phase is implemented and resulted in a more developed assessment of soil health in the EU. The basic obligations for Member States in option 1 would be to set a definition of soil health through a minimum set of indicators and thresholds, establish soil districts, set up and implement adequate monitoring systems. Member States would also have the obligation to identify, register and assess (potentially) contaminated sites. The advantage of this option would be that it is less demanding for Member States and stakeholders, since it does not require sustainable soil management measures, neither restoration nor remediation. It would also allow setting in place the monitoring framework to generate a more accurate picture of the situation of soils that would inform targeted intervention later on.

The main shortcoming of option 1 is that it only partially addresses the problem, since it provides a solution for sub-problem A, but lacks any measure addressing sub-problem B (“Transition to sustainable soil management and restoration, as well as remediation is needed but not yet systematically happening”). It would not set measures to kickstart the urgently needed transition towards sustainable use and restoration of soils, whereas the condition of soils has been very poor for a very long time, as explained in chapter 2. While it is true that the knowledge on soil lacks the accuracy needed to inform immediate action at local level, especially as regards restoration, there is enough data to justify and to set in motion a gradual system to ensure a transition to sustainable soil management towards the goal of preventing further deterioration and ensuring healthy soils. Option 1 would be a missed opportunity that underexploits the current momentum and postpones most of the needed action to an uncertain future. It also does not distinguish between action or requirements that could be put in place at an earlier stage and action that require longer timeframes to prepare. Furthermore, on the basis of the baseline scenario, given the current trends and the outlook for soil degradation, the policy objectives set in 4.2 would not be reached through monitoring obligations alone.

Option 1 would also not meet expectations from the European Parliament who has asked for criteria for the sustainable use of soil and measures to tackle all soil threats. Many of the Member States, stakeholders and the general public agree to a large extent on the importance of taking measures going beyond monitoring. Most stakeholders support an obligation to sustainably use soil, but some farmers, industry and academia ask for sufficient flexibility to adapt sustainable soil management to local conditions. Stakeholders generally support an EU obligation to restore unhealthy soils by 2050 through programmes of measures, but landowners expressed that derogations should be possible for degraded soils. Member States and industry emphasized the need for a flexible approach and to avoid unnecessary administrative burden.

Therefore, this policy option has to be discarded at an early stage. Nevertheless, its main advantage, i.e. less burden and allowing time to gather detailed soil data as a basis for action, will be taken into account when analysing impacts of the various options and in particular the preferred option, notably by considering a staged approached to make sure that the requirements reflect the uncertainties and the time needed to prepare their application.

The Soil Strategy for 2030 undertook to assess the feasibility of the introduction of a soil health certificate for land transactions to provide land buyers with information on the key characteristics and health of the soils in the site they intend to purchase (see details of the assessment in Annex 9 chapter 8). A certificate could increase awareness on soil health but there are risks which could impact on its effectiveness, including that significant additional testing could be required. The costs of setting up and maintaining an EU-wide certification scheme linked with land transactions are large, and to have added value, sufficient information on soil health needs to be available. For these reasons this option is discarded as a legally binding provision; however, a voluntary approach by Member States can be envisaged.

The Soil Strategy also undertook to assess provisions for a passport for excavated soil, that would reflect the quantity and quality of the excavated soil to ensure that it is transported, treated or reused safely elsewhere (see details of the assessment in Annex 9 chapter 9). The soil passport does not directly address soil health but may have a positive impact by reducing landfilling. Furthermore, a passport could improve the information and data on soil health. However, the passport is expected to have a significant administrative burden for setting up the IT, potential transition costs and maintenance costs, and will bring additional costs for economic operators and construction companies. There is also a high risk of incoherence with the Waste Framework Directive, so this option is discarded.

5.4Summary of policy options

The following scheme summarizes visually the options previously described:

Figure 5‑2: summary of policy options

6Impacts and comparison of the policy options

The methodology for this impact assessment is detailed in Annex 4. The analysis reflects unavoidable uncertainties (see Annex 9 for more details):

-Because of the greater flexibility allowed to the Member States especially under option 2, the details of the options which will be implemented in practice will not be fully clear until the Member States have determined these elements at national level.

-Quantitative data around the impacts of SSM practices, restoration and remediation measures is limited and dispersed, in particular for environmental impacts.

-It is not possible to quantify at the EU level to what extent local implementation of SSM practices, restoration and remediation measures, changes the value of a soil descriptor.

-Unknown extent of synergy effect of measures: some SSM practices may also lead to improvement of soil health, and consequently have the effect as well of restoration measures, but this effect is not known.

To mitigate these limitations, the following approaches were taken:

-Where possible, working assumptions have been made to facilitate the analysis;

-Based on the data available, an order-of-magnitude estimate of the potential costs has been provided using a selected sample of practices;

-Throughout the analysis, care has been taken to highlight where possible synergies are, focussing in the aggregate analysis on the likely combined, overall benefits.

For each building block, Annex 9 explains how it addresses the sub-problems A and B, details the economic, environmental and social impacts of the option 2, 3, 4, looking as well at the distribution of the effects and link and synergies with the other building blocks. The economic, environmental and social impacts are evaluated based on a comprehensive list of specific impact categories for which the priority level (high, medium, low) for soil has been chosen based on a given rationale.

All options have been assessed with a qualitative score ranging from “---” to “+++” against nine categories grouped into effectiveness, efficiency, coherence and risks of implementation (see Annex 9 section 1.4.2 for details and Annex 4 for further methodological details).

The scoring reflects the direction (positive or negative compared to the general objective) and magnitude (weakly to strongly, limited or unclear). The scale is presented in the table below.

The options have been assessed on this basis against nine categories representing effective, efficiency and coherence (and risks of implementation):

·Effectiveness: (a) Impact on soil health, (b) Information, data and common governance on soil health and management, and (c) Transition to sustainable soil management and restoration

·Efficiency: (a) Benefits, (b) Adjustment costs, (c) Administrative burden and (d) Distribution of costs and benefits (when relevant) - this considers how evenly the costs or benefits are distributed.

·Coherence – highlighting the synergies or not with options under other building blocks, and/or with the broader policy environment    

·Risks for implementation.    

Risk for implementation is presented separately because it concerns both effectiveness and efficiency. In the case of adjustment and administrative costs, “-“ corresponds to less than EUR 1 million, “--“ to between EUR 1 and 5 million and “---“ to more than EUR 5 million.

For each building block, the scoring of the three options is compared for all nine categories, identifying whether there is an option that results equal or better in all categories.

Quality assurance measures were implemented to ensure a coherent assessment between all policy options.

The main policy choices for the decision makers are over the trade-off between flexibility and harmonisation, in terms of ensuring delivery of the objectives whilst respecting subsidiarity. In terms of the building blocks, the most significant impacts are linked to building blocks 3, and 5 but the other building blocks are essential to enable delivery.

6.1 Analysis of building block 1: soil health definition and soil districts

6.1.1Environmental impacts

The process of defining soil health indicators and soil districts, will not have a direct impact on the environment. However, these are critical steps necessary to determine the action and measures needed to achieve soils in good health, and hence improve soils and surrounding environment.

6.1.2Economic impacts

There will be no economic impacts, beyond those discussed under administrative impacts below.

6.1.3Administrative costs

Administrative costs will be minimal for this block compared to other blocks.

6.1.4Social impacts

The process of defining soil health indicators will not have direct negative social impacts. However, as mentioned for the environmental impacts, defining soil health descriptors, thresholds and districts is a critical step necessary to determine the action and measures needed to achieve soils in good health, and ensuring an adequate provision of the ecosystem services, tightly linked with food and water security, climate mitigation and adaptation, and preservation of biodiversity. This plays a key role in delivering inter-generational equity, avoiding a greater burden on future generations through the further deterioration of soil health.  

Also, defining soil health descriptors can have a positive and direct impact on the provision and use of information for further research and development, such as fertility and erosion studies, remote sensing analysis and ecosystem service assessments. Defining soil health descriptors has as well the ability to contribute to future policy needs, by facilitating the design and delivery of linked regulatory areas (such as climate law).

Soil heath districts can facilitate the engagement of local stakeholders and create a significant incentive towards local participatory approaches for soil management, in particular if the soil health districts are set of a smaller, local size. Participatory processes also enhance knowledge and skills transfer especially in regard to local and traditional ecological knowledge on sustainable management practices, allowing as well intergenerational exchange. Soil health districts are therefore expected to trigger a large social and citizen engagement towards sustainable soil management and soil restoration, fostering ownership of the objectives of the SHL among local communities.

6.1.5Implementation risks

One implementation risk depends on the partial knowledge on which soil descriptors and related ranges are defined, which may lead to take sub-optimal decisions and actions. Another risk is the potentially great variability of soil districts and the uncertainty on how adequately the different pedoclimatic conditions and land use would be taken into account. Risks to implementation of each option under this building block due to lack of human or financial resources is low, as existing structures can be used to define soil health descriptors and establish soil districts.

6.1.6Stakeholder views

The majority of stakeholders recognise the value in defining soil health descriptors and thresholds: several highlighted the benefit that these would play in triggering action as soon as a threshold or range is crossed. In response to the OPC, stakeholders overall agreed that a number of different chemical, physical, water-related and biological indicators would be either reasonable or very effective to assess soil health, agreeing that a combination of indicators is required to do so effectively. In particular, several stakeholders highlighted the importance of reflecting ecosystem services and biodiversity, given their importance in addressing the functioning of soils and its services and the minimum levels required to maintain these services. Stakeholders also noted that there has been significant research and consideration of what constitutes soil health over the years, and as such there is a body of evidence already available which can be drawn on. The Soil Expert Group noted that thresholds should be set that motivate actors to take action i.e. they need to be achievable, but also understandable and easy to measure. Concerning the soil district, stakeholders broadly agree that districts should be set on the basis of location specific factors, in particular climate, soil type and land-use, and hence allowing districts to vary in terms of size would be beneficial. The Member States that provided feedback in general called for applying subsidiarity and providing sufficient flexibility to adapt the governance elements and the definition of soil health to the country specificities (see Annex 9 section 2.2.6 for details).

6.1.7Comparison of options

All options score positively in terms of effectiveness. The establishment of soil health descriptors and districts across the EU is a necessary facilitating step to the subsequent implementation of effective soil health management and restoration actions to achieve the general objective set. A set of chemical, physical and biological soil health descriptors must be established with threshold and/or range values to be able to classify which soils are ‘healthy’ and which soils are ‘at risk’.

Options 2, 3, 4 would achieve significant improvements in the availability of information and data on soil health compared to the baseline.

The key difference is the level of flexibility, and how much is harmonised at EU level. Defining thresholds and districts at EU level minimises the risk of a lack of comparability and consistency across Member States. Based on the experience of legislation such as the Ambient Air Quality Directive (AAQD) and Water Framework Directive (WFD), leaving definitions of soil health (i.e. the values for the descriptors) and soil districts to Member States (option 2) could result in a variability in the approach to and the thresholds and ranges defined for different descriptors, and also in the approach to defining districts; there is the risk that the different levels of stringency and ambition will undermine the achievement of objectives. Under Option 2, and somewhat also Option 3, across Member States there may be a variance in the approach to defining thresholds for different descriptors and the number of descriptors for which thresholds are set, whereas Option 4 would not entail this risk, but would be difficult and time-consuming to define and agree on such specific values at EU level.

In terms of coherence with the other building blocks, Options 3 and 4 are considered marginally more consistent with all options under the other building blocks – for example, it would be more difficult to fit Option 2 in this block–- where Member States define thresholds and districts, with Option 4 under the sustainable management or restoration block- where a set of measures to maintain or restore soil health is defined at EU-level.

Greater harmonisation also somewhat mitigates the implementation risks of this building block–- defining soil health descriptors is a technically complex area and not all the Member States may have ready access to the necessary expertise needed to effectively define descriptors and thresholds. Stakeholders highlighted that expert knowledge surrounding the physical and biological aspects of soil health is not widespread, and that constant research, development and communication with experts is required to harmonise the understanding and reporting of the soil health indicators.

Option 3 opts rather for defining common EU values for a selected set of descriptors, based on available scientific knowledge that already takes into account the variability of soil condition. The ranges selected are those for which an out-of-range value would mean a critical loss of ecosystem services. This reduces the risk of variability relative to Option 2, and also the difficulty of the technical implementation under Option 4.

Where setting districts is left solely to the Member States there is a risk that these could be set on an inconsistent basis across Member States and/or on a basis which is not optimal for defining soil health. The provision of EU-wide mandatory criteria but maintaining flexibility for Member States under Option 3 increases the likelihood of addressing the challenges of varying pedo-climatic conditions when setting the districts. The eventual number of districts defined is unknown at this stage. Given the great variability of soils in the EU, a compromise would need to be found between homogeneity of soil condition in a district and a manageable number of soil districts. A working illustration is that the number of districts could be in the range between the number of EU regions and provinces (i.e. between 242 to 1,166).

Together, these challenges are anticipated to have a subsequent effect on the efficiency of improving information, data and governance around soil health. Hence, Options 2 and 4 are anticipated to be less beneficial in this respect than Option 3.

All options present low administrative burden when comparing across the building blocks and no adjustment costs.

Table 6‑1: summary scores for building block 1

6.2 Analysis of building block 2: soil health monitoring

6.2.1Environmental impacts

Monitoring soil alone will not have a direct impact on the environment but will inform management and restoration activities actioned under other building blocks. As such, soil monitoring profits indirectly a wide range of ecosystems and the services they provide, such as carbon sequestration, water quality and availability and resilience to natural hazards such as flooding, and basis for biodiversity. This assessment does not substantially change between the options 2, 3, 4 of building block 2.

Implementing a definition and monitoring of net land take could deliver tangible improvements in the information, data and common governance of soil health. This would significantly work towards the standardisation and alignment of the definition of net land take itself and the processes it involves, in addition to assessment methodologies, between Member States, and better facilitate the development of comparable data and enable an accurate oversight of land take trends at the EU-level.

6.2.2Economic impacts

Recording and assessing the soil status will generate additional costs for Member States. This is detailed in the following section on administrative costs. However, monitoring the health condition of soils across the EU is expected as well to lead to technological development and innovation (productivity and resource efficiency) and stimulate academic and industrial research, for example the use of artificial intelligence solutions from sensing systems and field-based measuring systems (e.g., hand-held spectrometers, portable DNA extraction, on-site chemical analysis) as well as remote sensing. This development would have a direct and positive economic impact. Furthermore, there could also be a direct positive impact on the conduct of business and position of SMEs such as laboratories within each Member State due to the increase in their services to carry out the analysis of the soil samples.

Option 2 would allow Member States higher flexibility to determine the soil testing regime and methodologies with minimised changes compared to their current system.

6.2.3Administrative costs

The minimum number of soil samples in the EU needed to have a statistically reliable measurement of soil health, taking into account the variability of soil condition, has been estimated at 210 000 points (see section 2.1.5). This is a significant increase (about two times more) compared to the current 34 000 points from Member States added to 41 000 from LUCAS Soil (campaign of 2022). Therefore, there will be additional costs due to the increase of the number of samples to be taken by Member States, transported and analysed as well as an increase in the parameters to be measured for assessing soil health. However, synergies between LULUCF reporting and soil health monitoring can decrease total costs for Member States. There would be similar synergies with the descriptors relating to biodiversity under the NRL proposal and in respect of the forests soils under the upcoming forest monitoring proposal.

Option 4 is anticipated to lead to marginally higher one-off cost relative to Option 3 as there is greater harmonisation in sampling and analysis methods EU-wide that would require a greater change in processes and training to align with these requirements.

The integration of different monitoring systems requires one-off costs linked with determining and validating “transfer functions” between the two systems. However, if a Member State has validated transfer functions towards LUCAS Soil for all parameters, it can integrate LUCAS Soil data to complete the minimum set of sample points needed. This may not be possible in option 2 which has consequently higher recurrent monitoring costs. Other recurrent costs are linked with the functioning of the competent authorities and the resources needed to analyse the sample measurements, to determine the area subject to degradation and the intervention required to restore soil health. Monitoring the net land take would pose an additional, medium administrative burden (3.6 million per annum), but it is anticipated that the benefits of this measure would outweigh the costs (see Annex 9 chapter 7 for details).

The administrative burden for building block 2 will be for the Member States. No administrative burden for any other actors – e.g. businesses nor citizens – has been identified. The following table presents the summary of the different administrative burden for options 2, 3 and 4 of building block 2.

Table 6‑2: administrative costs for building block 2

The ongoing administrative burdens captures the monitoring activities including the processing and assessment of the data, determining trends, assessing the effectiveness of actions taken and identify where additional action is required.

For Member States who already have soil monitoring frameworks in place the administrative burden can be expected to be lower than Member States who will be implementing a monitoring framework for the first time.

6.2.4Social impacts

Increasing the amount of publicly available soil monitoring data will help to increase the public awareness and societal engagement on soils and the challenges they face. Sharing data and information on soil health can be used to make more informed decisions about sustainable soil management practices. Data and information on soil health can also be used to better inform citizens on the importance of soil, in synergy with the EU Mission ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’ who aims to increase soil literacy through wide engagement with citizens and concerned actors. Moreover, soil monitoring and the data collected can have a positive and direct impact on the provision and use of information for further research and development into actions/measures which can improve/maintain the status of soils across the EU.

This assessment does not substantially change between the options 2, 3, 4 of the building block 2.

6.2.5Implementation risks 

If option 2 is selected, there is a risk that the Member States who already have a monitoring framework in place simply continue with (or do not sufficiently expand) these systems. Indeed, stakeholders noted that there is a preference amongst Member States to retain their national systems to maintain continuity in their data sets, hence comprehensiveness and comparability of the data across the Member States may not be substantially improved even if this is needed.

A recognised risk of Option 4 relates to the difficulty to determine a common monitoring framework (including sampling strategies) across the EU; should option 4 be attempted, it may significantly delay the implementation timetable due to the complexity of the task.

Option 3 has a lower risk of inconsistency in monitoring standardisation in comparison to Option 2 whilst also reducing the risk for some Member States not having the necessary expertise to develop a monitoring framework. In addition, Option 3 addresses the risk of delay of Option 4, by determining only the methodologies for measuring soil health descriptors and leaving the possibility to Member States to use instead validated transfer functions.

Even though additional human or financial resources may be needed, especially in those Member States that have not yet established a monitoring framework, the risk that the options identified under this building block cannot be implemented at all due to lack of these resources is rather low, as existing governance structures in all Member States can be used and built upon.

6.2.6Stakeholder views

Stakeholders emphasised that the key issue presently is the lack of harmonisation of approaches to collect and compare data. The discrepancies between Member States, and the fact that some Member States have set monitoring processes in place whilst others do not, was clear in the evidence provide by stakeholders.

In response to the OPC, there was a strong agreement across all stakeholder types that there should be legal obligations for the Member States to monitor soil health in their national territory and report on it, including on land-take. 89% of all respondents ‘totally agreed’ this obligation should be put in place, with a further 8% ‘somewhat agreeing’. ‘Totally agree’ was also the most common response across all stakeholder types, with Business Associations being the only exception, where ‘somewhat agree’ was the most frequent response. The Member States that provided their views overall acknowledged the importance to have long-term soil monitoring (see details in Annex 9 section 3.2.6); among the countries having a national legislation on soil monitoring already in place, the comment was raised to avoid in the SHL incompatibilities with existing obligations.

6.2.7Comparison of options 

All options would deliver significant improvements in the data, information, knowledge and governance of soil health and management. Furthermore, monitoring of soil health descriptors is a critical and necessary facilitating step to the subsequent implementation of effective soil health management and restoration actions. However, there will be some variance between the options concerning effectiveness and efficiency.

Effectiveness

Where full flexibility in these matters is left to Member States (Option 2), there is a greater risk of inconsistency and a lack of harmonisation across Member States. Although some improvements relative to the baseline may be achieved through the application of transfer functions, the variability in the collection, analysis and reporting of soil samples (in particular due to differences in laboratory techniques) is anticipated to be greatest under Option 2 relative to Options 3 and 4. This greater variability in monitoring will lead to lower comparability between Member States in terms of reporting and interpretation of data.

Efficiency

A greater variability in monitoring carries a number of disadvantages, in particular for Member States, which subsequently will need to invest greater financial and human resources and face longer delays in developing knowledge and resolving issues that stem from a lack of harmonisation. Under Option 2, due to the partial integration of national and LUCAS data, the Member States will not be able to fully exploit LUCAS data to achieve the minimum number of points to reliably conclude on soil health at national level and so would need additional costs to reach the minimum number. Under Option 4, due to the need for Member States to modify and adapt all the established soil monitoring practices, it could take a substantial amount of time and costs (e.g. training) for all Member States to implement the full methodological change.

The key impact of this option will be the cost for Member States of undertaking additional sampling, analysis and reporting/data collation, either at existing sampling sites (e.g. where the range of descriptors needs to be expanded), or for new sampling sites (these costs are additional to the costs of existing monitoring network of around 41 000 LUCAS and 34 000 Member State monitoring sites which are captured in the baseline).

Table 6‑3: summary scores for the options 2, 3, 4 of building block 2

In summary, options 2, 3 and 4 would deliver a significant improvement to the data and information on soil health and form a critical basis for other building blocks under the SHL. Option 3 appears to be the option that best balances the opposing risks of lack of consistency and comparability across Member States (option 2), and the complexity of one entity defining a set of monitoring processes that are applicable EU-wide (option 4).

6.3 Analysis of building block 3: sustainable soil management 

6.3.1Environmental impacts

Several policies at EU level influence the way soils are managed but there is no dedicated soil policy to ensure the sustainable use of all managed soils, even though this would substantially improve the environment, and the quality of natural resources. Sustainably managed soils that are rich in soil biodiversity positively affect aboveground biodiversity, ensure good water infiltration and retention. They have high fertility. They also reduce risks of nutrient and pesticide leaching into watercourses, resulting in improved groundwater and surface water quality, and flood mitigation, and can improve biotic resistance to pests. They provide a wide range of stable ecosystem services both in natural landscapes and urban areas, highly dependent on the type and extent to which sustainable soil management practices are applied. Air quality would be improved as would climate change mitigation through increased carbon sequestration and reduced GHG emissions (e.g. N20 and CH4) from soil linked to fuel use or synthetic fertilizer production.

6.3.2Economic impacts

The magnitude of the costs and benefits depends largely on the required change in current management practices but also on the ambition of the SSM practices in question, including banning harmful practices as envisaged under option 4. More ambitious practices are associated with higher investment costs for individual soil managers, such as for machinery renewal or agro-forestry investments. Higher ongoing costs may arise for practices of all ambition levels that require e.g. higher or more expensive inputs (e.g. for establishing cover crops on agricultural soils that are usually left bare between harvest and re-seeding of the main crop) compared to current practices. However, many of these costs can be offset or even turned into profits in the long run (see e.g. Table 7 ‑ 5 in chapter 7.1 and Annex 9 (section 4) for details).

Estimating the adjustment costs to achieve sustainable management of all soils is extremely challenging due to several currently unknown factors including incomplete knowledge of soil health parameters, data limitations and complexity (see Annex 9 (section 1.1.4.)) as well as the various measures and practices that could be implemented at Member State level.

Reduced costs for individual soil managers can be expected if newly adopted practices require fewer inputs for production (e.g. synthetic fertilizers or irrigation). If soil fertility is maintained or increased over the long-term, yields from food, feed, and biomass production are likely to stabilise or increase. In agriculture and forestry, the implementation of SSM has the potential to lead to more diverse production systems that may prove more resilient to external fluctuations in climate, market prices, and supply-demand by having a wider range of marketable products (including tourism) and can accelerate the growth of business and livelihoods. Trade-off of economic costs and benefits will vary significantly by practice-type and may vary for each individual practice depending on the conditions and location in which it is implemented. Current studies do not provide exhaustive data for all possible SSM practices on all soil types in the EU, but those that focused on specific practices at farm/land unit level, agree that the costs of implementing SSM are in many cases outweighed by the economic and in all cases by the environmental benefits. Short-term individual costs are likely to be offset over the long-term, but soil managers who are not the landowners may be at a disadvantage as some SSM practices may take up to 10-20 years to deliver benefits.

The costs of sustainable soil management have, on a selection of five illustrative measures, 68  been estimated at between 28 and 38 billion Euro per year at EU level, while the on-site benefits could amount to 20 to 30 billion euro. 69  However, this estimation focuses purely on economic costs and immediate benefits such as impacts on yields or fertiliser use. 70  Off-site (environmental and social) benefits associated with these practices could not be quantified. For forest managers, costs are more difficult to quantify but estimated to be more limited (around 0,7 billion euro per year), while significant proportions of SSM private benefits fall on forest land managers assuming that the forests have been used less intensively and that soil degradation has not yet progressed as far (Annex 11 section 2). 60% of the forests in the EU is commercially owned. On-site costs and benefits would fall on landowners and/or soil managers, while off-site costs and benefits would fall on other parties or society, for example for industrial purification of drinking water. Since SSM practices will maintain and even improve soil heath, it is assumed that landowners may profit from the long-term benefits of sustainable actions taken by land managers, or at least from ensuring that the value of land does not decrease over time because of soil degradation. Costs and benefits falling on urban land managers would be more limited.  

The estimation of the overall benefit to cost ratio for addressing soil degradation shows a positive value of 1.7 (see 7.3). This estimation was performed using as many quantifications as possible for off-site benefits; still, a large number of off-site benefits remained unquantified (see Table 2 ‑ 4 ). This means that it is overall advantageous for society to implement sustainable soil management (and soil restoration) practices. However, it may be not always advantageous for soil managers to implement them since on-site costs may be higher. Furthermore, the full benefits may come in the medium to long term. To overcome this situation, soil managers are expected to need incentives and financial support to transition to SSM (as well as to implement restoration practices) so that the negative outlooks described in  Table 2 ‑ 1  can be transformed into positive ones. Section 7.3.2 provides elements of reflection on the available funding for this transition.

Furthermore, the potentially high costs and the related uncertainties can be mitigated by a staged approach, allowing Member States flexibility in the application of sustainable soil management requirements.

6.3.3Administrative costs

Administrative burden for the implementation of each option, including determining appropriate management practices for different soils and uses, and monitoring their respective application or avoidance in case of banned practices, is estimated to be moderate for Member States, except for option 4 which requires significantly higher costs for the design and establishment of dedicated planning activities for soil management to ensure proper implementation of the management practices. Administrative burden for individual soil managers could increase depending on how Member States ensure and control the correct implementation of SSM practices and the extent of harmonisation with already existing legislation.

6.3.4Social impacts

Several of the environmental benefits can be associated with positive social impacts in the short to long-term. Increased carbon sequestration potential, for example, helps reduce climate change-related risks, and improved flood mitigation substantially improves the safety and quality of life of people living in flood risk areas. Stable or potentially increased yields due to sustainable soil management support food security. Diversification of agricultural and forestry production systems, accompanied by a greater variety of marketable products, provide opportunities for new jobs and an increased landscape and recreation value. Recreational value, along with physical and mental health, is positively influenced by healthy and sustainably managed soils both in the countryside, but especially also in urban areas where the implementation of SSM practices can contribute to the creation of healthy green spaces and reduce heat islands, contribute to better air quality and housing conditions. Jobs can be created or reduced depending on whether conversion to SSM requires a higher or lower work force but must be paired with necessary reskilling and upskilling measures and preparation.

6.3.5Implementation risks 

Defining sustainable soil management could be either too restrictive or too broad, both of which could reduce the impact on soil itself. Too much flexibility on SSM principles and practices may result in very different levels of ambition in their implementation across the EU, while a more prescriptive approach risks not taking sufficient account of the various climatic, socio-economic, and environmental conditions in each Member State, or being too complex.

A possible risk in implementing the options could be a lack of financial resources for Member States, but also a lack of human and financial resources for soil managers. Differentiating the extent of this risks based on the three different options is, however, not possible as this depends to a large extent on a) which specific soil management practices are to be implemented, b) the extent to which Member States already support and encourage SSM practices, and c) the extent to which soil managers already apply SSM practices and therefore the necessary shift in their soil management. In some cases, additional labour force and budget, e.g. for investment in machinery or salaries for harvest hands, may be needed, while in other cases the application of SSM can lead to reduced costs, e.g. for inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides. In any case, financial support both for Member States and soil managers already is available for a number of practices, e.g. under the CAP or can be further supported in the future, e.g. under the Carbon Removal Regulation.

6.3.6Stakeholder views

The majority of respondents to the open public consultation strongly agreed on the need for a legal obligation for Member States to set requirements for the sustainable use of soils. Stakeholders indicated the need to consider different soil responses when defining sustainable management and supported the provision of a code of practices for sustainable use of soils for different land uses. In addition, the need to anchor exchange and sharing of experience of farmers and land managers was emphasized to create a toolbox and provide education so that the necessary measures are implemented. With regards to financial aspects of implementing SSM, particular attention should be paid to short-time costs and investments compared to longer term benefits. They also pointed out differences between the various SSM practices and their impacts, the difficulty of producing detailed instructions at EU level, and the possibility that too much flexibility may be ineffective. It was also noted that it should be possible to ban some of the practices that are harmful for soils. While a level playing field with mandatory minimum requirements for all Member States (especially for the farming sector) was requested, a very stringent approach as the one under option 4 was identified to likely generate a pushback from Member States and stakeholders. The Member States that provided their views overall supported sustainable soil management principles to avoid soil deterioration, while allowing flexibility to adapt practices to local conditions (see details in Annex 9, section 4.2.6). Farmers emphasized the need to define SSM practices per region with the involvement of local consultants and professionals while landowners and managers called for voluntary measures but with sufficient safeguards to prevent further damage of soils.

6.3.7Comparison of options 

The limited existing evidence for the precise costs of the implementation of SSM practices throughout all soil types and Member States and the great range of flexibility (e.g. voluntary or mandatory implementation of certain practices) across options under this building block limit the precision of comparison. The transition to sustainable practices may lead to local and temporary decrease in the quantity of food or biomass production (depending on the changed practices and local conditions). However, these effects are usually counteracted in the medium- to long-term, also by reducing the risks and effects of crop loss linked with increasingly extreme climatic events. So, while there are no imminent consequences negatively impacting food security, the envisaged options implemented will contribute to the wider objective of strengthening agricultural resilience and the strategic autonomy of the European Union..

Effectiveness

Full flexibility for Member States to define sustainable management principles and practices based on an indicative annex, as would be the case under option 2, could result in the ambition being reduced to a minimum (a so-called "race to the bottom") as Member States need to consider the demands of a wide range of stakeholders. The implementation of option 4 requires a broad list of sustainable soil management practices at EU level and would prove difficult to adequately address the diverse environmental, climatic and socio-economic conditions and soil types in all Member States. While option 4 would ensure that certain sustainable practices would be applied across the EU, formulating these practices considering the diversity of local conditions and agreeing on them at EU level would be a tremendous challenge and would likely result in an approach of rather broad and simple practices that could be applied in many places, but at the expense of their actual effectiveness and the transition to truly sustainable soil management. The flexibility given to Member States under option 3 could lead to higher ambition than under option 2 because Member States will at least have to reflect the mandatory SSM principles but is less restrictive than option 4. Therefore, option 3 is estimated to have a better impact both on soil health and the transition to sustainable soil management (Option 3 ‘+++’).

All options are considered to contribute equally to improved information, data and governance (option 2, 3, 4 ‘++’) as compared to the baseline as Member States will need to monitor and control the implementation and uptake SSM practices to ensure that soils are sustainably managed.

The mandatory nature of respecting specific SSM principles under option 3 will guarantee effective minimum standards and is therefore expected to have greater environmental benefits than option 2. This could be further accelerated by banning certain practices on which there is broad scientific consent about their harmfulness for soil (option 4). Social benefits will be similar under each option but can be linked to environmental benefits and may therefore also be higher under option 3. Economic benefits to landowners and wider society are expected if soil degradation and associated costs are reduced. While the implementation of option 3 or 4 may target soil threats more effectively than the more flexible approach under option 2, a more precise indication of SSM practices (option 4) may lead to higher economic costs for soil managers in the short-term (depending on the change required). Economic benefits from improved (or maintained) soil health may, however, only occur in the longer term. Consequently, all the options will stimulate significant benefits, with option 3 expected to have the strongest positive impacts (option 3 ‘+++’).

Efficiency

All options will generate significant costs for implementation (option 2, 3, 4 ‘---'). Adjustment costs under option 2 may be lower given the greater flexibility, while the mandatory implementation of principles (options 3) and certain practices (option 4) may require more stringent enforcement and monitoring, depending on the specific practices and the current state of play in each Member State. Similarly, the administrative costs are likely to be the highest under option 4 (‘--‘).

The distribution of costs and benefits between the various stakeholders involved (Member States, society, landowners and land managers) is highly dependent on the type of implementation (indicative or mandatory provisions), and the extent and area of required principles and practices and is considered unequal under all three options (Option 2, 3, 4 ‘--‘). While some SSM practices may deliver a positive economic return in the short term, others may take years to emerge or to pay back earlier investments, giving a disadvantage to e.g. tenant land managers as compared to landowners. Greater flexibility (option 2) will result in fewer costs for both Member States and individual soil managers but is likely to generate fewer of the above mentioned economic, environmental and social benefits as compared to option 3 or 4. Option 4 is expected to have the highest adjustment costs while benefits are presumably higher primarily for society and only delayed for land users.

Coherence with other building blocks may be positively or negatively affected (option 3, 4 ‘+/-‘), depending on the respective principles (options 3) and practices (option 4). Option 2 is considered slightly more coherent with the other building blocks due to the increased flexibility for Member States which could in turn create higher harmonisation between all building blocks (Option 2 ‘+’), even though this flexibility provides the risk of a weaker implementation of sustainable management measures and leaves room for harmful practices to continue. This risk is reduced under option 3 and especially option 4 (banned practices). There could be overlap between legislation especially in the sectors of agriculture, resulting in additional costs and/or administrative burden (greater under options 3 and 4). A key risk is to establish suitable SSM principles (option 3 ‘--‘) and even higher for practices (option 2 and 4 (‘---‘)) considering every soil type, region and other local parameters.

Table 6‑4: summary scores for the options 2, 3, 4 of building block 3