Agroecology Europe (AEEU), the European association promoting agroecology as a set of practices, a science and a movement across Europe welcomes the Commission’s COM(2023) 416 Proposal for a Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience published on the 5th of July 2023.
The Soil Monitoring Law (SML) marks a positive starting point for the move towards healthy soils throughout Europe, establishing a comprehensive and systematic monitoring framework to ensure a thorough assessment of soil health and its evolution across Europe.
However, the SML is only a first step and should be accompanied by well-defined roadmaps, ambitious and quantifiable measures outlining the actions to be implemented by Member States to restore soil health both in quality and quantity. This includes promoting beneficial agroecological practices for soil health and the implementation of binding targets and intermediate objectives for Member States to achieve by 2030 and 2040.
AEEU highlights the need for a more action-oriented approach in the proposed Directive, as the current version heavily emphasises monitoring at the expense of tangible actions.