On 23 October 2025, the European Parliament (EP) gave its final approval to the Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience (SML)— Europe’s first-ever law dedicated to soil health.
This landmark legislation crowns more than a decade of scientific advocacy and delivers on a key promise of the European Green Deal: a shared legal framework for protecting, monitoring, and restoring soils across the EU. Its objective is clear: to ensure that all EU soils are healthy and resilient by 2050.
Scientific outputs to support implementing the Directive
For AI4SoilHealth—a Horizon Europe project building an AI-powered soil health monitoring system—the Directive provides the policy framework for the project’s scientific and technological innovations, linking data, monitoring, and decision-making.
We have published a brief to inform policy makers of the some of the latest science coming out of the AI4SoilHealth project which will support the implementation of the Directive. The brief does not seek to be exhaustive; instead, it focuses on five areas where AI4SoilHealth has produced scientific inputs that can help the European Union and Member States implement the Directive—turning policy into practice.
-Soil Districts & Units
-Monitoring and assessment framework
-Measurement and methodologies
-EU Infrastructure and support
-Support for Stakeholders
Download the brief from our resources portal.
