Critical Analysis of Portuguese and European Union Soil Legislation: A Study Based on Information Available in the SoiLEX Database

The European Green Deal aims to make Europe the world's first carbon-neutral continent, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 15 seeks to achieve neutrality in land degradation. For that, soil, a depletable natural resource, requires adequate protection and preservation, which calls for its management through an environmentally conscious framework. Soil supplies food regulates water and nutrient cycles, and healthy soils also store carbon. Its ecosystem services are under pressure, making it difficult to maintain its health and preserve biodiversity. Despite existing legal instruments, soil degradation is on the rise and is mostly addressed indirectly in the EU governance measures, without a harmonized soil legislation before the 23rd of October 2025, when the Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience was approved by the European Parliament. This directive will complement existing soil legislation and will contribute to healthy soils as soil starts to be treated as a protected natural resource. This study aims to carry out a critical analysis of Portuguese and European Union soil legislation, based on the information available in the SoiLEX database. The aim was to evaluate the contributions of that legislation to soil health, particularly regarding soil threats that are listed in that database. It was found that Portuguese legislative acts only make indirect references to threats to soil, in a vague manner related to soil salinization, and no reference is made to soil acidification. European Union legislation makes more direct references to the SoiLEX database threats to soil, but for some soil threats, the references are still indirect. Moreover, there is no reference as a SoiLEX Topic to salinization, compaction, and acidification of soil. The contribution of this study is to reveal the absence of soil protection visibility on EU and Portuguese legislation and can be used to revise and update the soil related legislation.