In order to meet the goals of the EU Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection, soil protection will need to be further integrated in other policy areas. For this reason, an analysis of the measures adopted by the Member States in plans and programs pursuant to certain pieces of Community and international legislation is required. The EUSOIL project aided to this task and identified, described and evaluated the measures taken under the Water Framework Directive (WFD), Cross Compliance Instrument (CC) and United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) concerning their contribution to soil conservation.

The objective of this study is to identify, describe and evaluate the measures already taken by Member States under the Water Framework Directive (WFD), Cross- Compliance (CC) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) to combat and mitigate the soil threats identified and their potential contribution to the soil conservation objectives as outlined in the EC Communication ‘Towards a Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection’ (COM (2006) 231 and 232).