Inspection of batches of soil, building materials and granular waste;

Laboratory analysis accreditation scheme for soil, water bottom and groundwater investigations;
Field work in environmentally sound soil and water bottom investigations.

Amendment of Annex C to the Soil Quality Regulation, laying down rules for the implementation of soil quality in relation to the insertion of standards documents and updating of several standards documents

The draft measure includes updates to pre-existing and previously notified standards documents as well as new standards documents. All standards documents contain technical requirements.

The Soil Quality Regulation [Regeling bodemkwaliteit] implements the Soil Quality Decree [Besluit bodemkwaliteit], the Water Act [Waterwet], the Soil Protection Act [Wet bodembescherming] and the Environmental Management Act [Wet milieubeheer]. The Regulation governs, inter alia, how the quality of the
building materials, soil and dredging spoils to be used is determined and how the applicable standards are tested. The Regulation refers to standards documents which are applied when granting licences and approvals that companies and people must have in order to be allowed to carry out certain activities. The standards documents also state how companies must carry out these activities. The standards documents are jointly developed by industry and government. The standards documents are not static. Innovations and changing insights may lead to amendments of standards documents. The industry expressly wishes the Soil Quality Regulation to be in line with the above-mentioned documents, so that, in practice, work can be done according to the newest insights and techniques. For this reason, references to the standards documents are updated periodically. The draft amending Regulation includes such an update. Similar amendments to the Soil Quality Regulation have already been made, which were also notified to the European Commission at the time in
accordance with Directive (EU) 2015/1535.
All standards documents referred to have been checked for possible incompatibility with the European Construction Products Regulation (Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 March 2011 laying down harmonised conditions for the marketing of construction products and repealing Council Directive 89/106/EEC).
A mutual recognition provision is included in Article 13(3) of the Soil Quality Decree.
The Technical Requirements as set out in the amended standards documents to be designated for products (soil, dredging spoils and building materials) relate only to the way in which it is established that they meet the environmental quality requirements necessary to protect soil and surface water. These environmental quality requirements are included in the Soil Quality Regulation, and remain unchanged. There is no harmonised European regulation for these environmental quality requirements.