CSDDD
Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (Directive (EU) 2024/1760)
A mandatory due diligence duty for large companies operating in the EU.
In-scope businesses must identify, prevent and end human rights and environmental harm across their own operations and chain of activities, and show the evidence for what they have done.
European Union
Process-based due diligence
Adopted; amended by Omnibus I
26 July 2029
European Union
CSDDD is EU law. The legal obligation sits with in-scope companies operating in the EU, though its due diligence duty reaches suppliers across the wider chain of activities worldwide.
The essentials
At a glance
The three questions in-scope teams tend to ask first: does this apply to us, when does it apply, and what happens if we do not comply?
For procurement
What CSDDD means for your supply base
CSDDD is often read as a legal and sustainability duty, but much of the work falls to procurement. The directive expects prevention and remediation to happen within the supplier relationships that procurement manages, not separately from them.
In-scope buyers will pass these obligations on to their suppliers. Expect due diligence terms to be written into supplier contracts. Expect prevention plans to be agreed with suppliers, not forced on them. And expect a duty to keep working with a supplier where the risk can be managed, rather than dropping them as soon as a problem is found. The cost of changing suppliers, the influence needed to get problems fixed, and the evidence that a relationship is being managed responsibly all sit with procurement.
That makes supplier risk visibility a procurement question as much as a compliance one: where to concentrate engagement, which relationships carry the most risk, and how to show that buying decisions considered the risks that were already known.
The obligations
What CSDDD asks of you
CSDDD is process-based. Adequate due diligence, carried out and evidenced, is itself the compliance. In practice it comes down to a small set of duties.
Integrate due diligence into company policy and risk-management systems, with board-level ownership.
Map actual and potential adverse human rights and environmental impacts across your chain of activities.
Take appropriate measures to prevent potential impacts and to bring actual ones to an end, including through your business relationships.
Provide remediation where you have caused or contributed to harm, and engage meaningfully with affected stakeholders.
Operate a notification and complaints mechanism for people affected by your operations and value chain.
Track the effectiveness of your due diligence and publish an annual statement on it.
In practice
What this looks like in your supply chain
You can only end the impacts you can see. The duty to identify and end them depends on knowing where they are in your supply chain. Audit-based data shows risk concentrating in categories that are often invisible in self-reported or public datasets. These are the areas CSDDD makes you find, assess and act on.
Risk category: HIGH
Forced labour indicators
Why does this matter?
Recruitment fees, withheld documents and debt bondage remain among the hardest impacts to detect, and the most serious to miss.
Key dates
The road to application
CSDDD has moved considerably since adoption. The current shape, after Omnibus I, is a single application date preceded by national transposition.
Contact
Understand your exposure under CSDDD
Talk to our team about what CSDDD means for your supply chain and the evidence you would need to provide.
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