EU efforts for sustainable soil management – Unambitious standards and limited targeting

Summary:

In Europe, 60-70 % of soils are unhealthy, in part due to soil and manure management practices. The common agricultural policy and the Nitrates Directive provide tools to encourage improvements in soil and manure management.

We assessed whether the Commission and member states made effective use of these EU tools for managing agricultural soils and manure sustainably. We found that these were not used sufficiently and that there remains considerable scope to improve soil health.

We recommend that the Commission reviews and reports on the level of ambition of the standards, assesses the results of their implementation, reports on the targeting of common agricultural policy voluntary measures, limits the use of derogations and improves consolidated data at EU level.

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