Building on and upgrading the existing EU Soil Observatory, the Commission should establish a digital soil health data portal that should be compatible with the EU Data Strategy, set out in its communication of 19 February 2020 entitled A European strategy for data, and with the EU data spaces. The digital soil health data portal should be a hub providing access to soil data coming from various sources, in an aggregated form at the soil unit level or at a more detailed level if relevant, provided that it is not possible to identify the individual values or the location of the underlying georeferenced samples. That portal should primarily include all the data collected by the Member States and the Commission as required by this Directive. The processing and accessing of those data, including for scientific purposes, should comply with relevant Union law, such as Directives 2003/4/EC, 2007/2/EC, (EU) 2019/1024 of the European Parliament and of the Council as well as Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 of the European Parliament and of the Council and Regulation (EC) No 223/2009. Furthermore, Member States should be able to review soil health data and to request correction of any errors, before such data are made public through the digital soil health data portal. In addition, it should be possible to integrate in the portal, on a voluntary basis, other relevant soil data collected by Member States or any other party, and in particular data resulting from projects under Horizon Europe and the EU Mission A Soil Deal for Europe, provided that those data meet certain requirements as regards format and specifications. Those requirements should be specified by the Commission by way of implementing acts.
Text as published in the Official Journal, reproduced verbatim (including any typographical quirks of the source). For the authentic version, see EUR-Lex.
