EU Soil Strategy and regulation of soil health

Healthy soil is vital as it produces 95% of the food we eat, maintains more than 25% of our planet’s biodiversity and serves as the largest soil carbon sink. However, soil is a limited resource, and more than 60% of the EU’s soil is in poor condition. This means that efforts should be made to improve the level of protection.

The European Commission published the EU Soil Strategy for 2030Link to an external website in December 2021, where the objective is to achieve good soil health by 2050.

The EU Soil Strategy aims to ensure that by 2050:

• all soil ecosystems in the EU are healthy and more resilient and can thus provide their vital services in future as well.
• there is no net land take, i.e. new land is no longer taken into use, and soil contamination has fallen to a level at which it no longer causes harm to human health or natural ecosystems.
• protection and sustainable management of soil and restoration of degraded soil have become common practices.

As part of the implementation of the Strategy, the Commission published a proposal for a directive on soil monitoring and resilience (Soil Monitoring Law) in July 2023. The proposal is part of the European Green Deal. A provisional agreement on the directive was reached in April 2025.

• Press release of the Ministry of the Environment: EU reached provisional agreement on directive on soil monitoring and resilience (in Finnish) 

The directive aims to improve the monitoring of the state of soils and access to data on contaminated sites and to reduce the risks arising from contamination. Healthy soils should be achieved by 2050. If the process proceeds as planned, the directive should enter into force in summer 2025.

Finland is very happy that agreement was reached

The directive is an extensive and important addition to the EU regulation aimed to maintain and improve biodiversity, carbon sinks and the cultivation conditions for food. Soil is a large and complex package that is linked to a multitude of very different kinds of processes. The national room for manoeuvre for Member State that is a high priority for Finland was ensured in the negotiations. Finland considers it important that there will be no obligations that would anticipate the future EU financial framework.

Report on state of soils in Finland published

In summer 2023, the Ministry of the Environment published a report that contains information on the current state of soils in Finland and its monitoring. The ‘MaaTieto’ report examines the state of the soil of arable and forest land, mires and urban and built-up areas, and soil contamination as a separate theme.

The report was compiled by the Finnish Environment Institute, Natural Resources Institute Finland and Geological Survey of Finland. It has supported the preparations for the negotiations on the Soil Monitoring Law with the other EU Member States.

• Monitoring and State of Finland’s Soil and Policy Instruments for Its Use (in Finnsih, description sheet in English) | Publication archive ValtoLink to an external website