All Environment Publications

Soil polluted by trace minerals such as copper and nickel can be harmful to human and animal health and challenging to clean up. Planting angelica on contaminated soils can reduce soil toxicity and restore soil health.

Proposal for a Directive - COM(2023) 416, Impact Assessment Report - SWD(2023) 417, Executive Summary of the Impact Assessment Report - SWD(2023) 418, Guidance on EU Funding Opportunities for Healthy Soils - SWD(2023) 423

Healthy soils are essential for achieving climate neutrality, a clean and circular economy, reversing biodiversity loss, providing healthy food, safeguarding human health, and halting desertification and land degradation.

The EU soil strategy for 2030 sets out a framework and concrete measures to protect and restore soils, and ensure that they are used sustainably.

The zero pollution vision for 2050: Air, water and soil pollution is reduced to levels no longer harmful to health and natural
ecosystems

Soil is a fundamental natural resource that influences numerous policy areas. It is not only vital for a healthy environment but also essential to agriculture, and indeed the entire food sector.

Soil is a fundamental natural resource that influences numerous policy areas.

The objective of this Commission Staff Working Document containing guidelines on best practice to limit, mitigate or compensate for soil sealing is to provide information on the magnitude of soil sealing in the European Union (EU), its impacts and examples of best practice.