Federal Government, States, and Municipalities Sign Austria Declaration for a Soil Strategy

The background to the initiative is a monitoring report by the Austrian Conference on Spatial Planning, which Minister Norbert Totschnig (ÖVP) had presented around half a year ago. The report shows a decline in land consumption: "wurden zwischen 2023 und 2025 im Schnitt in Österreich nur mehr 6,5 Hektar pro Tag zusätzlich in Anspruch genommen". Daily land consumption thus remains above the long-term sustainability target but is below the levels of earlier years.

Declining Consumption as the Starting Point

In addition, the government program formulates a "Zielkorridor in Richtung eines 2,5 Hektar Bodenverbrauchs zu entwickeln", as Totschnig said in Linz. However, the declaration now signed deliberately remains general: "In Zahlen gegossene Vorgaben für eine Flächeninanspruchnahme enthält die Deklaration nicht." No concrete quantitative targets are thus set, but the political will to reduce [consumption] is reaffirmed.

In terms of content, the declaration ties in with the credo of "den sparsamen Umgang mit der Ressource Boden konsequent weiterzuentwickeln" while at the same time enabling economic development and creating housing. This is intended to identify the conflict of objectives between land-saving and growth needs and make it politically manageable. The signatories understand the paper as a joint directional guideline, not as a binding quantitative target.

Credo: Frugal Use of Soil

A central prerequisite for the further work, according to Totschnig, is a better data basis. "Wichtigste Voraussetzung für die Bodenstrategie sei die erstmals seit Dezember 2025 vorliegende vergleichbare Datenbasis für Flächeninanspruchnahme." Only then will it be possible in future to actually measure whether measures in the states are taking effect. The conference in Linz was explicitly framed as the launch of a data-driven update of the strategy.

Data Basis as a Prerequisite

The federal states sent positive signals in Linz regarding measures already underway. "Die unterschiedlichen Maßnahmenbündel wie Nachverdichten oder Stärkung von Orts- und Stadtkernen in den Ländern würden wirken, so der Tenor in Linz." Reference was made, for example, to densification projects and programs to strengthen existing town and city centers. These are to be further expanded in the future to avoid additional land take-up in outlying areas.

Measures in the States

Politically, the declaration is a signal of unity but remains open in substance. It dispenses with fixed reduction targets in hectares and leaves concrete implementation to the states and municipalities. Observers interpret this as an attempt to forge the broadest possible alliance without overburdening individual territorial authorities with overly stringent targets. Whether the declaration will actually lead to binding steps will only be shown by the future soil balance.

The second Austrian Conference on Spatial Planning, which Achleitner had organized politically as host, ended with the signing. The next conference and the updating of the monitoring report are considered benchmarks for whether the direction now agreed upon actually translates into measurable results. Until then, the declaration remains above all a political commitment to a more careful use of the resource of soil.