Press Release: Commission proposes strategy to protect Europe’s soils

The European Commission has proposed a strategy to ensure that Europe’s soils remain healthy and capable of supporting human activities and ecosystems. Good quality soil is essential to our economic activities as it provides us with food, drinking water, biomass and raw materials – and all our human activities are somehow related to soil. But soil degradation is accelerating across the EU, with negative effects on human health, ecosystems and climate change – and on our economic prosperity and quality of life. To reverse this trend, the Commission’s strategy sets a common EU framework for action to preserve, protect and restore soil, but leaves Member States flexibility to implement it in a way which fits local situations best. Member States must take action to tackle threats such as landslides, contamination, soil erosion, the loss of soil organic matter, compaction, salinisation and sealing wherever they occur, or threaten to occur, on their national territories. The Soils Strategy is the last of the seven Thematic Strategies that the Commission is presenting, in accordance with the 6th Environmental Action Programme.

European Commission: DG Environment: A strategy to keep Europe's soils robust and healthy http://ec.europa.eu/environment/soil/index.htm

European Commission: DG Communication: MEMO/06/341 http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/06/341&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

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