Battery due diligence moves to 18 August 2027 — why that is not a reprieve

It moved a date, not an obligation. The battery supply-chain due-diligence duties in Chapter VII of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 — adopting a due-diligence policy, identifying and assessing risks in the chains for cobalt, natural graphite, lithium and nickel, and having that policy verified by a notified body — were to apply from 18 August 2025. Regulation (EU) 2025/1561 postpones the start of application to 18 August 2027.

The stated reason for the postponement is sequencing: the Commission's due-diligence guidelines were not in place, and economic operators could not reasonably build a verifiable policy against guidance that did not yet exist. Those guidelines were due by 26 July 2026 [VERIFY — confirm publication status and reference before relying on the date].

Nothing in the amendment changes the substance of what has to be demonstrated in 2027. The risk categories, the chain-of-custody expectations, the third-party verification requirement and the notified-body route are unchanged. Only the clock moved.

• 18 August 2025 → 18 August 2027: start of application for battery supply-chain due-diligence obligations.
• Covered raw materials unchanged: cobalt, natural graphite, lithium, nickel (and their compounds).
• Commission due-diligence guidelines due 26 July 2026 [VERIFY].

Because the two slowest items in the programme are exactly the ones you cannot compress. Notified-body verification of a due-diligence policy is a documentary audit against a management system, and it requires the system to have been running long enough to produce records — risk assessments, supplier responses, mitigation decisions, grievance handling. A policy written in early 2027 has no operating history to verify.

The second is n-tier mapping. Your tier-one cell supplier is not where cobalt or natural graphite enters the chain; refiners and smelters sit three to five tiers up, and their identity is commercially sensitive. Getting named smelters, country of origin and chain-of-custody evidence out of that depth takes contract cycles, not emails — which is why the supplier data clause you sign in 2026 decides whether you can answer in 2027.

Then add the queue effect. Every battery manufacturer and importer placing product on the EU market now shares one deadline and a finite population of notified bodies. Verification slots in the first half of 2027 will be scarce, and the operators who booked against a mapped, evidenced policy will take them.

• Notified-body verification needs operating records, so the system must run through 2026 to be auditable in 2027.
• Smelter- and refiner-level visibility is a contractual outcome, obtained over supplier renewal cycles.
• Verification capacity is shared and finite — late bookings compete for the same 2027 slots.

Manufacturers should treat 2026 as the evidence-generation year. Run the due-diligence policy live even though it is not yet enforceable: complete one full risk-assessment cycle across the four raw materials, log the supplier responses you did and did not get, and document mitigation decisions. That record is the artefact a notified body will read in 2027.

Importers carry the harder problem, because they must demonstrate due diligence over chains they never built. The economic operator placing the battery on the EU market owns the obligation regardless of who manufactured the cell, so the leverage has to be written into purchase terms now — origin disclosure, smelter lists, audit-report access and a right to pass evidence to a notified body.

Certifiers and market-surveillance authorities gain a cleaner sequence from the delay, but not a softer standard. Expect requests in 2027 for the policy document, the verification report, the risk-assessment records and the supplier evidence trail behind them — and expect gaps in 2026 records to read as an immature system rather than a timing quirk.

• Manufacturers: run one complete risk-assessment cycle in 2026 so 2027 verification has records to examine.
• Importers: put origin, smelter-list and audit-access obligations into supplier contracts at the next renewal.
• Certifiers: the 2027 evidence set is policy + verification report + risk assessments + supplier trail.

No. The battery passport under Article 77 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 still applies from 18 February 2027, six months before the due-diligence obligations start. The postponement is confined to the due-diligence chapter.

That ordering matters practically. From February 2027 you are publishing passport data for LMT, industrial batteries above 2 kWh and EV batteries while the due-diligence regime behind some of that supply-chain content is not yet in application. Build the data model so responsible-sourcing fields can be populated as evidence arrives, rather than treating passport delivery and due diligence as two unrelated projects. The battery-passport hub covers the February 2027 data obligations in detail.

• 18 February 2027 — battery passport (Art 77) and QR code (Art 13(6)): unchanged.
• 18 August 2027 — due-diligence obligations apply: six months after the passport.
• Design passport data fields so responsible-sourcing evidence can be added incrementally.

Not yet. A proposal would exempt so-called small mid-cap companies — broadly those with turnover below €150 million — from the battery due-diligence obligations, and would reduce reporting frequency for those still in scope. Both elements remain at proposal stage and have not been adopted [VERIFY — confirm current legislative status before planning around it].

Planning against an unadopted exemption is the expensive mistake here. If it is adopted and you prepared anyway, you carry a documented supply chain you can use commercially. If it is not adopted and you waited, you face August 2027 without mapping or verification. The asymmetry points one way.