Recital 25

(25) The chain of activities should cover activities of a company’s upstream business partners related to the production of goods or the provision of services by the company, including the design, extraction, sourcing, manufacture, transport, storage and supply of raw materials, products or parts of the products and development of the product or the service, and activities of a company’s downstream business partners related to the distribution, transport and storage of the product, where the business partners carry out those activities for the company or on behalf of the company. This Directive should not cover the disposal of the product. In addition, under this Directive the chain of activities should not encompass the distribution, transport, storage and disposal of a product that is subject to export control by a Member State, meaning either the export control under Regulation (EU) 2021/821 of the European Parliament and of the Council (12) or the export control of weapons, munitions or war material under national export controls, after the export of the product is authorised. This Directive is complemented by other legislative acts which also address negative adverse impacts in the field of human rights or environmental protection. In particular, Regulation (EU) 2021/821 sets up a regime for the control of exports, brokering, technical assistance, transit and transfer of dual-use items, covering, inter alia, software and technologies that can be used for cyber-surveillance purposes. Under this regime, Member States should consider in particular the risk of such goods being used in connection with internal repression or the commission of serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. In addition, Regulation (EU) 2019/125 of the European Parliament and the Council (13) prohibits or regulates, as the case may be, the export of goods such as chemical substances that are used or could be used for the purpose of capital punishment or for the purpose of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Moreover, several other legislative initiatives are aimed at mitigating the environmental impacts of products during their whole lifecycle, including by setting ecodesign requirements based on the sustainability and circularity aspects of products. Compliance with this Directive should facilitate compliance with the provisions and objectives of these other legislative acts, and with the terms and conditions of the applicable authorisations implemented thereunder. Exporters should take into account the results of their due diligence findings under this Directive in their compliance with those other legislative acts. The term ‘chain of activities’ as defined in this Directive is without prejudice to the terms ‘value chain’ or ‘supply chain’ as defined in or within the meaning of other Union legislation.

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Source: EUR-Lex CELLAR · retrieved 2026-08-27 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.