Healthy soils are essential for our society and environment, as they provide many ecosystem services. However, more than 60% of the soils in the EU are currently affected by one or more soil degradation processes and thus hampering the functioning of these soils. Recent EU policy initiatives have been taken to protect and restore soils. The entry into force of the Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive (SMRD) in December 2025 marked a major milestone. Also, the EU Soil Strategy for 2030 and the Mission Soil are important policy initiatives to safeguard and restore soils in the EU and beyond. Given this context, the EU Soil Observatory (EUSO) is the principal provider of knowledge and data on soils to underpin EU soil policy development and implementation. This report highlights the main activities and outcomes of the EUSO during 2025. In the past year, the EUSO provided support to the legislative process and the implementation of the SMRD, the Mission Soil and the Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming Regulation, and successfully oversaw the European Commission joining the 4 per 1000 initiative. Next, the EUSO Soil Degradation Dashboard and the EU Soil Strategy Actions Tracker, two of EUSO’s tools to monitor respectively the state of soil degradation in the EU and the progress of the actions under the EU Soil Strategy were updated. Furthermore, the European Soil Data Centre, a key part of the EUSO, has grown significantly with 15 new datasets and over 14 000 downloaded datasets in 2025. In addition, in the past year, the EUSO published 55 scientific papers and 10 technical reports, many of which in close collaboration with Mission Soil projects. Finally, the EUSO supported stakeholder interactions and increased soil literacy among society by organising activities such as the 5th EUSO Stakeholders Forum, the Soil Literacy Workshop and several EUSO Working Group activities. Looking forward to 2026, the EUSO will continue taking up its role as the principal provider of data and knowledge to monitor, safeguard and restore soils.

BROOTHAERTS Nils;  PANAGOS Panos;  ARIAS NAVARRO Cristina;  BALLABIO Cristiano;  BELITRANDI Daniele;  BREURE Timo;  CESARINI Luigi;  DE MEDICI Daniela;  FAHL Fernando;  FENDRICH Arthur;  HAVENGA Christopher;  LABOUYRIE Maeva;  LIAKOS Ioannis;  LUGATO Emanuele;  MARTIN JIMENEZ Juan;  ORGIAZZI Alberto;  SANCHEZ GARCIA Carmen;  SCARPA Simone;  SCHILLACI Calogero;  VIEIRA Diana;  VAN EYNDE Elise;  VAN LIEDEKERKE Marc;  VISKARI Toni;  WOJDA Piotr;  YUNTA Felipe;  JONES Arwyn; 

2026-05-05

Publications Office of the European Union

JRC146084

978-92-68-39377-2 (online),   

1831-9424 (online),   

EUR 40701,    OP KJ-01-26-177-EN-N (online),   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC146084,   

10.2760/1842894 (online),