The Institute for Soil Sciences, Centre for Agricultural Research, as a project partner of the EJP SOIL, led by Zsófia Bakacsi, carried out a project coordination task to summarise the collection of soil data on soil properties and measurement methods in European countries. At the European level, there is a unified soil data collection (LUCAS), but there is much more data available in the individual European countries, that could allow a more detailed soil evaluation. The published article reviews the soil databases of the individual countries and draws attention to the particular need to ensure that the individual country-level data can be managed in a unified way at the European scale. The initiative will help to lay the foundations for concepts, strategies and recommendations at European level that focus on soil properties and also deal with them, which could also help to meet the criteria set.