EU Battery Regulation
Due diligence on cobalt, natural graphite, lithium and nickel becomes a market access condition on 18 August 2027. This page sets out what the obligation is, who it covers, and which dates have moved.
Verified 9 August 2026
Chapter VII of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 sets out a supply chain due diligence obligation modelled on the OECD framework. Six parts of it decide how much work you have in front of you.
Battery due diligence under the EU Battery Regulation applies from 18 August 2027. If you place batteries on the EU market and you are above the turnover threshold, you need a documented due diligence policy covering cobalt, natural graphite, lithium and nickel, a mapped supply chain, a risk assessment against the categories in Annex X, a mitigation plan, third-party verification by a notified body, and public reporting. The date is when verification must already be complete, not when the work starts.
Article 48 requires economic operators to adopt and operate a due diligence policy for batteries, structured around the OECD framework: a management system, risk identification, risk response, verification and reporting.
A supplier code of conduct on a website does not meet this. The policy has to name responsibilities, describe how decisions are made when a risk is found, and be capable of being audited against.
You need to know the origin of cobalt, natural graphite, lithium and nickel, and the chemical compounds containing them, through the chain of custody: mine, processor, refiner, cell producer.
Most companies have visibility to tier two and no further. That gap is the single largest reason the obligation was postponed, and closing it takes longer than any other part of the work.
The Regulation sets out the social and environmental risk categories that the assessment has to cover, spanning human rights, labour conditions, community impacts and environmental harm in Annex X.
The assessment is against those categories specifically. A general ESG screening built for another framework will not map cleanly onto them.
Verification is not a self-declaration. A notified body has to verify the due diligence policy, and slow designation of those bodies across Member States was one of the reasons cited for the two-year delay.
Verification capacity is finite. Operators who leave this to 2027 will be competing for slots with everyone else who did the same.
Operators must review their due diligence policy and make a report publicly available. Under the rules currently in force this is annual, though a proposed amendment would move it to every three years.
Documentation supporting the policy has to be retained for at least ten years, which means the record system needs to be designed for that from the start rather than reconstructed later.
The battery passport under Article 77 applies from 18 February 2027, ahead of the due diligence date, and covers EV batteries, LMT batteries and industrial batteries above 2 kWh.
The two obligations draw on the same upstream data. Building traceability once, for both, is considerably cheaper than building it twice.
Dates in force as of 9 August 2026. The due diligence date moved once already, so check before relying on any of these in a board paper.
Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 enters into force, replacing the 2006 Batteries Directive.
The Regulation begins to apply generally, with individual obligations phased in over the following years.
Regulation (EU) 2025/1561 is published in the Official Journal, amending Article 48(1) and postponing due diligence by two years. It is the only substantive change that amendment makes.
Revised deadline for the Commission's non-binding due diligence guidelines, moved from an earlier deadline of 18 February 2025 that passed without publication. Confirm current status before relying on them.
Battery passport requirements apply under Article 77 to EV batteries, LMT batteries and industrial batteries above 2 kWh.
Due diligence obligations apply to in-scope economic operators, with third-party verification already complete by this date rather than starting on it.
Minimum recycled content thresholds begin to apply for cobalt, lead, lithium and nickel.
A widely quoted EUR 150 million threshold is a proposal, not law. The distinction matters, because planning against an unadopted threshold is how companies end up out of scope on paper and in scope in practice.
| In force today | Proposed under COM(2025) 501 | |
|---|---|---|
| Exemption threshold | Net turnover below EUR 40 million, and not part of a group above EUR 40 million consolidated (Article 47) | Raise the exemption to operators below EUR 150 million net turnover, extending it to small mid-caps |
| Reporting frequency | Review and publish the due diligence policy report annually (Article 52) | Move the review and publication cycle to every three years |
| Legal status | Adopted and in force, as amended by Regulation (EU) 2025/1561 | A proposal, not law. Council position September 2025, Parliament report February 2026, interinstitutional negotiations opened March 2026 |
| What to plan against | Plan scope against the regime currently in force | Track it, but do not build a compliance plan on a threshold that has not been adopted |
Straight answer
Ethical Battery is a Battery Associates page. Our compliance work runs on batteryregulation.eu. Being clear about the boundary matters more in a regulatory subject than anywhere else.
Everything below sits on batteryregulation.eu, which is where our Battery Regulation work lives.
End-to-end support on the EU Battery Regulation for economic operators, from scoping obligations to preparing for verification.
batteryregulation.eu →The obligations under Chapter VII in detail, with the amendments and proposals that changed the timeline.
Read the article →Dated coverage of the Battery Regulation as obligations phase in, including the battery passport and carbon footprint work.
Browse the blog →Training on these obligations runs through the Battery Regulation workshop and, for the wider value chain, the BatteryMBA programme.
Ethical Battery began as a feasibility study run by Battery Associates with SIRALEC Services and Quabu. It looked at whether an affordable traceability and certification system could follow battery raw materials from mine batch through refining and cell production to recycling, and what that would be worth commercially.
The questions the study set out to answer have since become law. Chain of custody, verified origin and auditable records are now obligations under the Battery Regulation rather than a proposition to test.
This page replaces the original project page. The study is complete and is not an active engagement.
From 18 August 2027. The original date was 18 August 2025, postponed by two years under Regulation (EU) 2025/1561, which was adopted on 18 July 2025 and published in the Official Journal on 30 July 2025. That amendment changed the application date and the guidance deadline, and nothing else. The battery passport timeline under Article 77 was not affected and still applies from 18 February 2027.
Cobalt, natural graphite, lithium and nickel, together with the chemical compounds containing them. The obligation covers the sourcing, processing and trading of those materials in the supply chain of batteries placed on the EU market.
Under the rules currently in force, economic operators placing batteries on the EU market are in scope unless net turnover is below EUR 40 million and the group is below the same threshold on a consolidated basis. A separate proposal, COM(2025) 501, would raise that exemption to EUR 150 million, but it has not been adopted and is still in interinstitutional negotiation. Scope planning should be based on the regime in force, not the proposal.
No, for a structural reason. 18 August 2027 is the date by which third-party verification must already be complete, so the policy, the supply chain mapping, the risk assessment and the mitigation plan all have to be operating before a notified body can verify them. Supply chain mapping past tier two is the slowest part, and notified body capacity is limited.
They overlap but are not the same. The Battery Regulation sets a sector-specific obligation focused on four raw materials with third-party verification by a notified body. The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, Directive (EU) 2024/1760, sets a broader corporate obligation. The Commission has said it intends to prepare guidance for both together to reduce duplication for operators in scope of both.
The deadline for publication was moved to 26 July 2026, from an earlier deadline of 18 February 2025 that passed without publication. The guidelines are non-binding when they arrive, which means the obligation in the Regulation stands regardless. Check the current status before relying on them.