Article 48 due diligence explained for battery supply chains

What Article 48 is asking for

Article 48 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 sets due diligence obligations for economic operators placing batteries on the EU market. Later amendments, including Regulation (EU) 2025/1561, refine how those duties apply. In operational terms, you must run a documented management system that identifies and addresses social and environmental risks in the supply chains of certain raw materials.

The materials most often in programme scope are cobalt, lithium, nickel, and natural graphite. Exact coverage depends on the consolidated legal text and your product chemistry. Treat this page as orientation for programme design, not a substitute for counsel.

How this differs from the battery passport

Strong programmes reuse supplier portals and evidence vaults for both streams. Weak programmes treat them as two disconnected projects and duplicate work.

Core programme components

1. Policy and governance. Written due diligence policy, roles, escalation paths, and board or executive ownership.
2. Supply chain mapping. Known suppliers for in-scope materials, with enough depth to support risk assessment.
3. Risk assessment. Structured register of adverse impacts, likelihood, severity, and mitigation status.
4. Risk mitigation. Actions, owners, and deadlines tied to suppliers and materials.
5. Third-party verification path. Where required, a planned route to independent verification rather than an ad hoc scramble.
6. Public reporting. A draft report that legal can review before any external disclosure.

Operating sequence that usually works

• Stand up the programme workspace and name the accountable owner
• Issue policy templates and collect signed uploads under document control
• Seed the risk register from known suppliers and material exposures
• Issue supplier evidence requests with token access where accounts are impractical
• Schedule audit reminders so verification does not depend on calendar memory
• Generate a public report draft only after risk and evidence status are current

Common failure modes

• Policy exists as a PDF, but no live risk register sits behind it
• Supplier emails live in inboxes instead of an evidence vault with actors and times
• Passport carbon fields move ahead while DD suppliers for the same metals lag
• Public report drafted before mitigation status is defensible

What to ask counsel

Confirm the exact material scope for your chemistries, transitional provisions that apply to your placing-on-market timeline, and whether your operating model (manufacturer, importer, authorised representative) changes who must run the system. Then map those answers onto a single programme calendar shared with passport publish planning.