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Paper short abstract

The re-emergence of soil legislation and its elaboration reshaped EU soil governance, as rival scientific coalitions contested what counts as legitimate data: a French-led EJP Soil pedological vision versus the Joint Research Centre’s standardized LUCAS survey model.

Paper long abstract

The European Law on Soil Monitoring and Resilience, adopted in 2025 after the failure of an earlier proposal, marks a significant shift from soil protection to soil monitoring. This transformation raises questions about the role of scientists in defining soil data and shaping what counts as legitimate knowledge for policy. We hypothesize that competing coalitions of experts sought to institutionalize different types of soil data, reflecting distinct approach to soil.

Drawing on the sociology of science and technology and the sociology of public problems, this paper examines how scientific coalitions progressively formed and positioned themselves in relation to the Directive. Methodologically, we combine semi-structured interviews with a netnographic analysis of online interactions among scientific actors, enabling us to trace the reconfiguration of expert networks and their strategies of influence over time.

Our findings show that the shift toward soil monitoring resulted from a struggle between two competing visions of soil data during the drafting process. A pedological approach, was promoted by a French-based coalition structured around the EJP Soil network who emphasized field-based expertise and a pedological vision of soil. A statistical approach was advanced by Joint Research Centre (JRC) through the LUCAS survey, prioritizing standardized, large-scale data production.

We demonstrate how the EJP Soil network progressively consolidated as an epistemic community, learning to translate its protocols into policy-compatible formats. By aligning their data practices with EU governance logics, its members reinforced their influence over the institutionalization of soil monitoring and the definition of legitimate soil data.