Cecília Bojarski Pires (PhD candidate at the School of Law of University of Minho. FCT research scholarship holder - 2023.01072.BD)
In July 2026, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre presented the first EU-wide assessment[1] of where and to what extent the main soil degradation processes occur, drawn up by the EU Soil Observatory (EUSO). According to this assessment, around 62 per cent of EU soils are degraded, based on the 19 soil degradation indicators used in the EUSO Soil Degradation Scoreboard. These findings highlight the ongoing urgency of soil protection and raise questions about the adequacy of the legal framework recently adopted by the European Union (EU).
The trajectory of European soil protection policy illustrates a tension between environmental ambition and economic competitiveness. Has the EU’s recent legislative approach, culminating in Directive (EU) 2025/2360 (Soil Monitoring Law), prioritised efficiency and deregulation over the transformative goals of the European Green Deal? This text traces the development of EU soil policy, examining the shifting rationalities behind legislative choices and their implications for the future of environmental protection in Europe.
In 2006, the Commission of the European Communities proposed a Directive[2] to establish a framework for soil protection. At that time, no specific EU legislation addressed soil as the vital non-renewable resource it is, despite growing evidence of degradation and its importance to human activity and ecosystems.
Although the European Parliament adopted its first reading position on the proposal in November 2007, negotiations within the Council failed to produce an agreement. By March 2010, a minority of Member States blocked progress, citing concerns about subsidiarity, high costs and administrative burdens. As a result, the legislative process remained stalled in the years that followed.[3]
From a critical perspective, the report The crusade against ‘red tape’: how the European Commission and big business push for deregulation,[4] published jointly by Corporate Europe Observatory and Friends of the Earth Europe, argued that a deregulatory “crusade” particularly favourable to the interests of large corporations was gaining ground within the European Commission: “this neoliberal push to weaken or block new legislation and scrap existing rules, especially environmental and social protection laws, under the misleading banner of tackling ‘red tape’, promoting «better regulation» or safeguarding «competiveness»”.[5]
With specific regard to the 2006 framework Directive on the protection of soil, the report Better regulation: corporate-friendly deregulation in disguise,[6] also published by Corporate Europe Observatory, argued that the political deadlock also occurred against a backdrop of opposition from certain economic and agricultural interests, accompanied by “lobbying by the UK government and the farming industry, including the UK’s National Farmers’ Union”,[7] which opposed the Directive.
Against this background, the proposal for a Directive establishing a framework for the protection of soil was withdrawn by the European Commission in May 2014, after having remained pending in the legislative procedure for eight years, within the framework of the Regulatory Fitness and Performance – REFIT: State of Play and Outlook.[8]
Nearly a decade later, in 2023, the European Commission introduced a new legislative proposal on soil monitoring and resilience, the Soil Monitoring Law.[9] This proposal emerged in a context still strongly characterised by the prominence afforded to environmental concerns, particularly within the framework of the European Green Deal[10] and the European Climate Law,[11] which made legally binding the objectives of achieving climate neutrality by 2050 and reducing emissions by 2030.
In this respect, although the 2006 proposal for a Directive establishing a framework for the protection of soil followed a separate legislative procedure that was subsequently abandoned, it remains an important antecedent for understanding the evolution of the European approach to soil protection.
That proposal followed a markedly protection-, prevention- and restoration-oriented logic. In addition to providing for measures to limit soil sealing, it required Member States to ensure that land users whose activities could significantly impair soil functions adopted precautionary measures and required the establishment, for areas identified as being at risk, of programmes of measures containing risk-reduction objectives, implementation timetables, and estimates of the resources required[12]. Even less sophisticated than the current legislation in terms of monitoring mechanisms, the 2006 proposal had an interventionist dimension that went beyond the mere production of Information concerning the condition of soils.
The benchmark for renewed ambition was set by the EU Soil Strategy for 2030[13]. In that document, soil still lacked a specific European legal framework providing an equivalent level of protection, which led the Commission to announce that, by 2023, it would present a legislative proposal specifically devoted to soil health. The stated ambition was substantial: by 2050, all soil ecosystems in the EU should be in a healthy condition, with soil protection, sustainable use, and restoration becoming the norm, an objective which, according to the European Commission itself, would require a combination of new voluntary and legally binding measures. The Strategy also included, among its long-term objectives achieving no net land take by 2050 and called un Member States to set ambitious targets to reduce net land take by 2030, prioritizing land reuse, limiting land take, and applying the so-called land-take hierarchy.
However, the prominence of the European Green Deal began to be progressively reconfigured, particularly from 2023 onwards. Supply-chain disruptions (due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), the energy crisis, rising production costs, and intensifying global competition (notably with the US and China) have, taken together, contributed to a reorientation.
In February 2023, while still framing its action within the European Green Deal, the European Commission presented the Green Deal Industrial Plan for the Net-Zero Age[14] with a strong focus on industrial competitiveness. As the first of the Plan’s four pillars, it proposed the creation of a “predictable and simplified regulatory environment”,[15] alongside a more rigorous analysis of the impact of new regulations on competitiveness and efforts to avoid unnecessary burdens.
This change in emphasis became even more evident with the Communication Long-term competitiveness of the EU: looking beyond 2030,[16] in which the European Commission concluded the time had come “to focus on the long-term competitiveness”[17] of the European Union. Although the Commission continued to regard the twin green and digital transitions as sources of growth, it increasingly situated them within a broader framework of sustainable competitiveness, economic security and strategic autonomy, while simultaneously emphasising the need for faster and simpler administrative procedures.
This new orientation was also accompanied by significant mobilisation among business interests in favour of greater competitiveness, placing competitiveness at the centre of the European agenda, a lighter regulatory burden, and a pause or review of some of the new requirements imposed on companies.[18] The report The carbon coup: how corporate capture is locking Europe into a fossil fuelled future,[19] published jointly by Corporate Europe Observatory and ReCommon, interpreted this mobilisation as an offensive by major industrial interests aimed at shifting the political centre of gravity away from the European Green Deal and towards an agenda more favourable to competitiveness, industrial subsidies and deregulation.
The movement also deepened during the new European institutional cycle that began in 2024. In the Political Guidelines for the next European Commission 2024-2029,[20] Ursula von der Leyen identified speed, coherence, and simplification as political priorities for the new Commission and proposed subjecting the EU acquis to a stress test to identify opportunities for simplification, consolidation, and codification. At the same time as formally reaffirming the goals set out in the European Green Deal, she argued that the existing legal framework for 2030 should be implemented in the “simplest, fairest and most cost-efficient way”,[21] while placing decarbonisation within the framework of a new Clean Industrial Deal aimed at competitive industries.
In November 2024, the Council’s Budapest Declaration on the New European Competitiveness Deal[22] made this shift even more explicit by calling for a “simplification revolution, simple and smart regulatory framework for businesses and drastically reducing administrative, regulatory and reporting burdens, in particular for SMEs”, adopting an “enabling mindset based on trust, allowing business to flourish without excessive regulation”.[23]
In 2025, the Competitiveness Compass for the EU[24] institutionally consolidated this new hierarchy of priorities by identifying regulatory burdens as a brake on European competitiveness, announcing a reduction of at least 25 per cent in administrative burdens for businesses and 35 per cent for SMEs, and providing for the implementation of this policy through successive legislative Omnibus simplification packages.
Against this backdrop of a progressive reordering of European priorities, the legislative process culminating in Directive (EU) 2025/2360 (Soil Monitoring Law) requires contextualisation. The proposal for a Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience, presented by the European Commission in 2023, already represented a reduction in the level of ambition previously envisaged. The Commission acknowledged that on soil regeneration, the proposal was less demanding than the preferred option identified in the impact assessment, justifying this choice by the need to limit the burden on Member States, landowners and land managers. As a result, Member States were no longer required to establish new programmes of measures or specific soil-health plans, even though the Commission simultaneously acknowledged that this choice could increase the risk of failing to achieve the objective of healthy soils by 2050. Concern about reducing administrative burdens also appears expressly in the proposal’s section on “regulatory fitness and simplification”,[25] where the decision not to require Member States to establish new programmes of measures for sustainable soil management or soil regeneration is presented as a way to reduce administrative burdens.
Even so, the 2023 proposal for a Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience retained a significant normative dimension. The interinstitutional negotiations, however, further reduced that interventionist dimension. According to the European Commission itself,[26] the co-legislators moved away from the concept of sustainable soil management and instead favoured an approach based on supporting soil health and resilience. To that end, the Commission removed provisions that could create obligations Member States might pass on to soil managers, as well as the annex setting out the principles of sustainable soil management. Similarly, in the field of land take, the approach was narrowed from one encompassing different forms of land take to one focused on its most visible and readily monitorable manifestations, soil sealing and soil removal. The European Commission further explained that these provisions became effort-based, did not entail creating new permitting procedures, and should not prevent the authorisation of new activities. Finally, the Commission extended several of the deadlines originally proposed, a change it justified by the need to alleviate the administrative and financial burden.
These changes are reflected in Directive (EU) 2025/2360 as finally adopted. The final text no longer establishes a general obligation to define and progressively implement sustainable soil-management and regeneration practices for unhealthy soils. Instead, it focuses primarily on requiring Member States to encourage and support soil owners and managers, notably through advice, awareness-raising, research, innovation, training and access to financing instruments, thereby replacing a logic based on management obligations with an approach predominantly centred on support and incentives.
The difference is also significant in the field of land take. The objective of achieving no net land take by 2050 was not transformed into a legally binding obligation. Directive (EU) 2025/2360 instead focuses on soil sealing and soil removal and requires Member States to take certain mitigation principles into account when these occur. This constitutes a more flexible formulation than that contained in the 2023 Proposal for a Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience, under which Member States were required to ensure compliance with the principles for mitigating land take.
Although Directive (EU) 2025/2360 retains the prospect of achieving healthy soils by 2050, this horizon is not accompanied by a binding obligation of result or by mandatory intermediate targets. It therefore operates primarily as a long-term objective of European soil policy.
Environmental organisations that followed the negotiations also highlighted the reduction in normative ambition throughout the legislative process. The European Environmental Bureau[27] concluded that the future legislation “has been significantly watered down”[28] during the legislative process, identifying among the main concessions precisely the removal of obligations relating to sustainable soil management, the narrowing of the provisions on land take to soil sealing and soil removal, the extension of several deadlines, and the greater degree of flexibility granted to Member States.
This legislative trajectory reveals a progressive change in the normative density of the European project for soil protection. Although embedded in a different political and legal context, the 2006 proposal contained instruments directly aimed at preventing degradation, reducing risks and restoring soils. At the height of the European Green Deal, ambition rose again, with a mix of voluntary and binding measures, a target of healthy soils by 2050, mandatory principles of sustainable management, programmes of measures and the objective of no net land take all being envisaged. The Proposal for a Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience presented in 2023 represented an initial departure from those ambitions, while the final text of Directive (EU) 2025/2360 further deepened the shift away from an interventionist logic towards one more heavily centred on monitoring, assessment, information production and support for soil managers.
Unlike the 2006 proposal for Directive establishing a framework for the protection of soil, Directive (EU) 2025/2360 ultimately completed the legislative process; its adoption is undeniably a significant milestone, as it establishes, for the first time, a European legal framework specifically devoted to soil monitoring and creates common instruments capable of generating more systematic and comparable knowledge on soil conditions across the EU. Nevertheless, a question remains about the gap between the ambition that justified reopening the debate on European soil legislation under the European Green Deal and the normative density of the instrument that ultimately emerged from the legislative process.
The trajectory of Directive (EU) 2025/2360 must therefore be situated within a broader process of reordering EU priorities, in which environmental protection has not disappeared. Still, its translation into legal obligations increasingly faces demands for competitiveness, regulatory flexibility, and burden reduction. In this regard, Directive (EU) 2025/2360 can be interpreted, in line with the analysis long advocated by the Corporate Europe Observatory, as a sector-specific manifestation of what has increasingly become established as a European institutional orientation that attaches growing importance to economic competitiveness and regulatory simplification, with implications for the content and stringency of legal obligations regarding environmental protection. This orientation is reflected in the simplification of rules, the reduction of administrative burdens, and the reshaping of the regulatory environment in ways more favourable to competitiveness, often at the expense of environmental objectives embodied in the European Green Deal, as illustrated by the recent Omnibus packages.
David Harvey’s[29] reflections on the relationship between the State, economic competition, and institutional reorganisation can enrich the discussion of this reorientation of European priorities. In his analysis, Harvey examines how deregulation and competition are presented as instruments that eliminate bureaucratic obstacles, increasing efficiency and productivity, and which reduce costs, while the State itself is expected to pursue institutional reorganisations to improve its competitive position in the global market. Although this analysis cannot be automatically transposed to the EU’s institutional context, it provides a basis for reflecting on the relationship between certain mechanisms described by Harvey and current European discourse, which can be identified in the recurrent justification of reducing regulatory burdens, simplifying rules and making certain legal obligations more flexible by reference to the need to increase productivity and to preserve the competitiveness of European business and the EU itself. Hence, what is at stake is not necessarily the adoption of a particular political and economic model, but identifying a political and legislative choice whose consequences for environmental protection require examination. In particular, it becomes necessary to distinguish between the simplification of administrative procedures, which may contribute to more efficient implementation of legislation, and the reduction in the stringency of legal obligations, which may undermine the achievement of the environmental objectives proclaimed by the EU itself.
The extent of soil degradation across the EU underscores the need for effective legal instruments that address its consequences for human health, the environment, food security, water quality, and biodiversity.[30] Against this backdrop, the legislative choices made in Directive (EU) 2025/2360 reflect a political preference for efficiency and competitiveness, but the price of that choice may prove very high. As the EU moves forward, the question remains: will there be another opportunity to align soil protection with the ambitious vision of the European Green Deal, or will the growing prominence of competitiveness and regulatory simplification place lasting constraints on the ambition and effectiveness of European environmental protection policy?
[1] European Commission: Joint Research Centre, EUSO soil degradation dashboard, Publications Office of the European Union, 2026, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/7605517.
[2] European Commission, Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and the Council establishing a framework for the protection of soil and amending Directive 2004/35/EC, COM(2006) 232 final (Brussels, September 22, 2006), https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52006PC0232.
[3] European Commission, Report from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, The European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. The implementation of the Soil Thematic Strategy and ongoing activities, COM(2012) 046 final (Brussels, February 13, 2012), https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52012DC0046.
[4] Rachel Tansey, The crusade against “red tape”: how the European Commission and big business push for deregulation (Corporate Europe Observatory and Friends of the Earth Europe, October 2014), https://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/attachments/red_tape_crusade.pdf.
[5] Rachel Tansey, the crusade against “red tape”: how the European Commission and big business push for deregulation (Corporate Europe Observatory and Friends of the Earth Europe, October 2014), 1.
[6] Corporate Europe Observatory, Better regulation: corporate-friendly deregulation in disguise (June, 2016), https://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/attachments/betterregulationfaq01062016.pdf.
[7] Corporate Europe Observatory, Better regulation: corporate-friendly deregulation in disguise, 3.
[8] European Commission, Commission Staff working document accompanying the document Regulatory Fitness and Performance Programme (REFIT): State of Play and Outlook, SWD(2014) 192 final (Brussels, June 18, 2014), 74, https://www.parlament.gv.at/dokument/XXV/EU/30125/imfname_10476588.pdf.
[9] European Commission, Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on Soil Monitoring and Resilience (Soil Monitoring Law), COM(2023) 416 final (Brussels, July 5, 2023), https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52023PC0416.
[10] European Commission, The European Green Deal, COM(2019) 640 final (Brussels, December 11, 2019) https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52019DC0640.
[11] Regulation (EU) 2021/1119 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 June 2021 establishing the framework for achieving climate neutrality and amending Regulations (EC) n. º 401/2009 and (EU) 2018/1999 (European Climate Law), OJL 243, July 9, 2021, 1, arts. 2.º e 4.º, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:02021R1119-20260407
[12] European Commission, Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and the Council establishing a framework for the protection of soil and amending Directive 2004/35/EC, COM(2006) 232 final (Brussels, September 22, 2006, arts. 4.º, 5.º e 8.º), https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52006PC0232
[13] European Commission, EU Soil Strategy for 2030: Reaping the benefits of healthy soils for people, food, nature and climate, COM(2021) 699, final (Brussels, November 17, 2021), 4-9, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52021DC0699
[14] European Commission, A Green Deal Industrial Plan for the Net-Zero Age, COM(2023) 62 final (Brussels, February 1, 2023), 3, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52023DC0062.
[15] European Commission, A Green Deal Industrial Plan for the Net-Zero Age, COM(2023) 62 final, 3.
[16] European Commission, Long-term competitiveness of the EU: looking beyond 2030, COM(2023) 168 final (Brussels, March 3, 2023), 1, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52023DC0168.
[17] European Commission, Long-term competitiveness of the EU: looking beyond 2030, COM(2023) 168 final, 1.
[18] BusinessEurope, Madrid Declaration: BusinessEurope’s Council of Presidents – competitiveness is the road leading to a stronger EU position in the world and to economic and social progress (June 1–2, 2023), 1, https://www.businesseurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2023-06-01_madrid_declaration_-_council_of_presidents_final-f4e-1.pdf. The Antwerp Declaration for a European Industrial Deal (Antwerp, February 20, 2024), 1, https://cms.antwerp-declaration.eu/uploads/declaration.pdf.
[19] Rachel Tansey, The carbon coup: How corporate capture is locking Europe into a fossil fuelled future (Corporate Europe Observatory and ReCommon, April, 2024), https://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/The%20Carbon%20Coup%20final%20version.pdf
[20] Ursula von der Leyen, Europe’s choice: political guidelines for the next European commission 2024-2029 (July, 18, 2024), 8, https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/e6cd4328-673c-4e7a-8683-f63ffb2cf648_en.
[21] Ursula von der Leyen, Europe’s choice: political guidelines for the next European commission 2024-2029, 8
[22] European Council, Budapest Declaration on the New European Competitiveness Deal (November 8, 2024), point 4, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2024/11/08/the-budapest-declaration/pdf/.
[23] European Council, Budapest Declaration on the New European Competitiveness Deal, point 4.
[24] European Commission, A Competitiveness Compass for the EU, COM(2025) 30 final (Brussels, January 29, 2025), https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52025DC0030.
[25] European Commission, Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on Soil Monitoring and Resilience (Soil Monitoring Law), COM(2023) 416 final (Brussels, July 5, 2023), https://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:01978f53-1b4f-11ee-806b-01aa75ed71a1.0001.02/DOC_1&format=PDF.
[26] European Commission, Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament pursuant to Article 294(6) of the Treaty in the Functioning of the European Union concerning the position of the Council on the adoption of a Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience (Soil Monitoring Law), COM(2025) 596 final (Brussels, September 30, 2025), https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52025PC0596.
[27] European Environmental Bureau, Questions and Answers on the Soil Monitoring Law (SML), (Autumn, 2025), https://soill2030.app/resource-144.
[28] European Environmental Bureau, Questions and Answers, 1.
[29] David Harvey, A brief history of neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199283262.001.0001.
[30] European Commission, Soil Monitoring and Resilience, COM (2023) 416 final.
Picture by: Johannes Plenio on pexels.com.
