Trilogues continue on EU Soil Monitoring Law

12 January 2025

EU proposes Soil Monitoring Law

By Jenny Brunton, Senior European Policy Advisor

 

To ensure the same level of protection to soil that exists for water, the marine environment and air in the EU, the Commission put forward the Soil Monitoring Law on 5 July 2023. The Soil Monitoring Law addresses transboundary impacts of soil degradation, secure equal market conditions and promote policy coherence at both EU and national levels in order to deliver on its objectives regarding climate change, biodiversity, food security and water protection. It aims to deliver healthy soils by 2050.

In the proposal, soil health is defined as ‘the physical, chemical and biological condition of the soil determining its capacity to function as a vital living system and to provide ecosystem services’.  The proposal’s most important feature is the introduction of a harmonised methodology and rules for soil health monitoring across the EU.

Although some room is left for member states to decide how to implement the directive, it establishes common Union-wide criteria to assess whether a soil body is ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’. The framework would create a common database integrating data from EU-level, member state and private sources. Member states will be required to regularly and accurately measure soil health using the framework. 

In practice:

The proposal for a directive applies to all soils in the territory of member states. Under the Framework, member states are required to delineate their territories in ‘soil districts’, which is a newly defined governable unit introduced in the directive. Some loosely defined parameters to determine soil districts are laid out in the proposal. A competent authority designated by each member state will be assigned for each soil district. Member states are then required to establish a monitoring framework based on a set of criteria laid out in the directive, ensuring comparability of measurement across soil districts and member states. Using this framework, member states are required to accurately and regularly measure soil health. The Directive lays out methodologies to do so and an obligation to measure soils at least every five years.   

This certification would be complementary to the Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF). This linkage is still unclear and needs to be further clarified by the Commission.

Next steps:

The EU Parliament plenary agreed on its negotiating position on 10 April 2024.

The Council adopted its general approach on 17 June 2024.

The first trilogue took place on 22 October 2024, followed by one on the 12 December.

If an agreement is found during the negotiations, the text of the agreement will need to be approved by the Council (Political Agreement) and then formally adopted as the Council’s Common Position (first reading position). 

Following the formal adoption in the Council, the Common Position would then need to be approved by the European Parliament at second reading, first by the ENVI Committee, and then in a plenary concluding the procedure (an early second reading agreement).

If however, trilogues do not take place or do not succeed in finding an agreement, the proposal will go to a second reading with the Parliament and Council attempting to find a compromise at a later stage.