Is the European Union protecting soil? A critical analysis of Community environmental policy and law

Abstract

Although preserving soil health is essential for sustainability, over the last decade, there has been a significant increase in soil degradation in the European Union (EU) and, based on available information, this trend will not reverse in the long run. While the Union has adopted ambitious policy objectives addressing soil threats, there is not to date an EU soil-specific legislation, but various aspects of soil protection are scattered across many EU policy areas. This paper contributes to evaluating the status of soil protection within the EU environmental legislation, by creating an inventory of the relevant provisions and analyzing their features. It emerges that soil threats are not comprehensively regulated by the EU legislator and soil protection looks like the by-product of several provisions which mainly set preventive, qualitative and non strictly binding measures.