Deep Dive

The landscape of DD actors

Published May 19, 2025 by Robin Smith (Gilli) | Reading time 4 minutes

Introduction

In recent years, due diligence (DD) has increasingly become a priority on the EU policy agenda. It views due diligence as crucial to its economic and sustainability goals, where companies operating within its jurisdiction must show how they identify, prevent, and mitigate actual or potential environmental, human rights or governance risks within their own operations and that of their supply chains. Within its broader political strategy for economic resilience, sustainability, and global competitiveness, the EU views due diligence both as a tool and an outcome: a means to secure critical raw material supply for strategic industries, and an end in itself to foster responsible sourcing and reduce social and environmental harm globally (DiliCHANCE Grant Agreement, 2024).

Over the years of due diligence development in the EU, there have been deployed numerous instruments to cover the complexity of due diligence and responsible business conduct. However, companies often find the regulatory landscape fragmented and face difficulties understanding and navigating it. Thus, many EU companies struggle with due diligence implementation in adequate and cost-effective and impactful ways.

A one-stop shop for due diligence

The EU-funded project DiliCHANCE is designed to establish a comprehensive one-stop shop for due diligence excellence, with the goal of optimizing business practices, strengthening assurance mechanisms, and improving tools and resources across global mineral supply chains.

DiliCHANCE has identified its key target audiences and proposed a range of activities to maximize outreach, raise awareness, and disseminate knowledge on the practical implementation of due diligence. Building on and complementing that foundational work, the project also focuses on how it can actively support agenda setting, advocacy, and policy development, with the ultimate goal of easing company due diligence uptake.

Influencing the policy agenda: diverse stakeholders playing diverse roles

One of the key enablers of progress in advancing due diligence is establishing multi-actor partnerships, ones that go beyond just formal compliance, but also aim to jointly address barriers to this due diligence adherence, where practical solutions are shared, and ownership can be fostered among these implementing actors.

A central pillar of the DiliCHANCE project is the facilitation of inclusive, multi-stakeholder dialogue among key EU and international actors involved in due diligence policy and implementation. By fostering meaningful engagement across public, private, and civil society sectors, the project aims to promote collective action and contribute to a more harmonized and level playing field. These efforts are intended not only to support strategic intervention points but also to help accelerate the transition from policy formulation to on-the-ground implementation.

In a first step, DiliCHANCE has conducted a stakeholder identification and mapping exercise. By fully understanding the nature of the dynamics of the diverse set of actors in due diligence, tailored engagement strategies for key stakeholder groups can be developed, with the aim of supporting the effective uptake and refinement of existing policies, while leveraging project insights to inform the development of future due diligence frameworks in the mineral sector.

The methodology of the stakeholder mapping was simple: determine what impact these stakeholders have on the overall strategic agenda setting and how these groups leverage the power of their advocacy. To do this, stakeholders were mapped using a two dimensional power-to-interest matrix, where power is referring to the stakeholder’s ability to influence agenda and interest reflected the degree to which the groups are concerned or themselves affected by due diligence policies. Stakeholders ranging from government organizations and policy makers, international organizations, large companies working across the mineral value chain, to professional industry organizations, assurance providers and NGOs were rated on a qualitatively defined scale for both the power and interest dimensions. Stakeholder positioning in the matrix was determined through expert judgment provided by the project partners. A cluster map was then generated to visualize an expected engagement and influence for the various stakeholders.

By classifying stakeholders according to their levels of power and interest, engagement efforts in agenda setting and advocacy can become more focused and strategic.

Developing focused engagement strategies

By classifying stakeholders according to their levels of power and interest, engagement efforts in agenda setting and advocacy can become more focused and strategic. Aligning advocacy approaches with each group’s role, motivations, and influence, enhances the effectiveness of implementation efforts and supports the overarching goals of the project. While various stakeholder groups contribute to shaping policy, promoting best practices, and ensuring accountability, those with the highest levels of power play a particularly critical role in setting the agenda at both governmental and institutional levels. With this, strategies for a more effective engagement with these various stakeholder groups was developed, to enable a more targeted approach to co-constructing solutions for more effective due diligence policy development and implementation.