Battery due diligence under EU 2023/1542: the other half of 2027 compliance

The battery passport deadline of 18 February 2027 gets most of the attention, but Regulation 2023/1542 carries a second compliance program with a deadline six months later. From 18 August 2027, larger companies placing batteries on the EU market must operate supply-chain due diligence on cobalt, lithium, nickel and natural graphite: documented policies, management systems, risk mitigation and third-party verification reaching back toward the mine. The obligation was originally set for 18 August 2025 and was postponed by two years by Regulation (EU) 2025/1561. This article maps what the due diligence chapter requires, who is in scope, and why the data collected for the passport already covers much of the evidence.

What does the regulation require beyond the passport?

Chapter VII of Regulation 2023/1542 (Articles 47 to 53) is a different kind of obligation from the passport. The passport is a per-unit record attached to each battery; due diligence is a company-level program covering how the raw materials inside those batteries were sourced. The two share a deadline year, a supply chain and, as we will see, a large part of their data.

The materials in scope are listed in Annex X: cobalt, lithium, nickel and natural graphite, including the chemical compounds needed to manufacture the active materials. For each of them, companies must identify and address risks in the categories the same annex defines: air, water, soil, biodiversity and human health on the environmental side, and human rights, labour rights including child labour, and community life including the rights of indigenous peoples on the social side.

The regulation does not invent its own methodology. It anchors the program in internationally recognised instruments, above all the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas, whose five-step framework (management system, risk identification, risk response, third-party audit, public reporting) is the skeleton every compliant program follows.

Which companies are in scope, and who is exempt?

The obligations fall on economic operators that place batteries on the EU market or put them into service, provided they had a net annual turnover of at least EUR 40 million in the preceding financial year, counted at group level. As with the passport, the importer carries the obligation when the manufacturer sits outside the EU.

Two boundaries matter in practice:

• All battery categories are covered. Unlike the passport, which applies to EV, LMT and industrial batteries above 2 kWh, the due diligence chapter covers every battery category, portable cells included, whenever the operator crosses the turnover threshold.
• Second-life batteries are carved out. Batteries that return to the market after preparation for re-use, repurposing or remanufacturing are not subject to due diligence a second time, provided they were already placed on the market before those operations. The regulation deliberately avoids taxing circularity with duplicate paperwork.

One moving part remains: as part of the same 2025 simplification package that postponed the deadline, the Commission proposed extending the exemption to small mid-cap companies below EUR 150 million turnover and lightening the review cycle. At the time of writing that proposal is still in the legislative process, so the EUR 40 million threshold stands.

What must a due diligence program actually contain?

Articles 48 to 52 translate the OECD framework into six concrete building blocks:

• A policy. A supply-chain due diligence policy for the four materials, adopted at company level, communicated to suppliers and the public, and embedded in supplier contracts.
• A management system. A chain-of-custody or traceability system that identifies each material, its quantities and dates, the actors in the supply chain and, where feasible, the mine of origin.
• Risk management. Identification and assessment of adverse impacts against the Annex X risk categories, a risk management plan, mitigation measures, and the ability to escalate, suspend or disengage from a supplier.
• Third-party verification. A notified body must verify the policies before batteries are placed on the market, and periodically afterwards. This is verification of the program, not self-declaration.
• Public reporting. An annual report on the due diligence policy, reviewed each year and published online.
• A grievance mechanism. A channel through which affected parties can raise concerns about the supply chain.

Article 53 adds a shortcut: the Commission can recognise industry due diligence schemes, and participation in a recognised scheme supports conformity. It does not transfer responsibility; the operator remains accountable for its own supply chain.

Why was the deadline postponed from 2025 to 2027?

The due diligence chapter was due to apply on 18 August 2025. In May 2025 the Commission included it in its Omnibus IV simplification package, and the co-legislators fast-tracked the postponement: Regulation (EU) 2025/1561 was adopted in July 2025, weeks before the original date, and moved application to 18 August 2027.

The stated reasons were practical. The Commission guidelines that were supposed to help operators apply the requirements, originally due by 18 February 2025, had not been published; their deadline moved to 26 July 2026. And the third-party verification layer had a bootstrap problem: no accreditation standard existed for the notified bodies expected to audit the programs, so there was nobody to be audited by.

What the postponement did not do is change the substance. Every obligation described above survives intact, only two years later. For a company whose supply chain runs four or five tiers deep, two years is roughly the time it takes to reach the mine-level suppliers, collect their proofs and survive a first verification. The clock stopped; the work did not shrink.

How does passport data double as due diligence evidence?

The regulation itself connects the two programs. Annex XIII requires the public section of the battery passport to carry information on responsible sourcing, as stated in the due diligence report. The report you publish under Chapter VII becomes an attribute of the passport you issue under the passport chapter.

The overlap runs deeper than one attribute. A due diligence management system needs supplier identities, material provenance, quantities and chain of custody for cobalt, lithium, nickel and graphite. The passport needs battery composition, the share of recycled content per material and, from 18 August 2031, proof that recycled-content minima are met (16% cobalt, 6% lithium, 6% nickel, 85% lead). Both programs interrogate the same suppliers about the same kilograms. A company that onboards each supplier once, collecting passport attributes and sourcing proofs in the same structured pipeline, builds one dataset and files it twice.

Recycled feedstock strengthens the case. The OECD framework applies lighter upstream requirements to verifiably recycled material, so a documented chain of custody from recycler to new cell shortens the diligence trail: it ends at the recycling plant rather than at a mine in a high-risk area. Every audited kilogram of recycled cobalt is simultaneously quota evidence and risk reduction. The same logic helps at verification time: a notified body that can read structured, timestamped supply-chain records audits faster than one handed a folder of PDFs.

Conclusion: one supply chain, one dataset, two deadlines

2027 is not one deadline but two: passports on 18 February, due diligence on 18 August. Companies that build them as separate projects will pay for the same supplier data twice; companies that treat the passport pipeline as the evidence base for due diligence will walk into the second deadline with most of the file already assembled.

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