Business and Human Rights

Based on these, Germany has created the “National Action Plan for the Implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights” (NAP). We support NAP, for example by entering into an accompanying industry dialogue in the automotive industry and working together with representatives from trade unions, civil society, science, politics, business and associations to develop further solutions for upholding human rights in the value chains.

As part of the Compliance Management System, Compliance bears central responsibility for the topic of business and human rights and maintains a continuous exchange with various functions, specialist areas and Group coordination. Responsible supply chain management should also be noted as a fundamental element for upholding human rights in cooperation with suppliers.

We have anchored our understanding of the basic aspects of business and human rights in both the Audi Code of Conduct and internal policies and have phrased our expectations for employees and business partners in the following documents, for example:

One elementary measure for preventing human rights violations is to raise awareness among both employees and business partners, for example as part of training courses on the topic.

We have identified and specified key focuses of work in line with the UN Guiding Principles, known as “Salient Business & Human Rights Issues,” in the Group-wide working group.

The purpose of a risk-based approach is to render the corporate human rights risks in our company transparent and to better prioritize them. We also prepare risk assessments on the topic of human rights in the context of the established risk management processes carried out by the main divisions and Group companies.

In addition, a cross-departmental working group in Group Compliance of the Volkswagen Group has determined the risk exposure for affiliated companies. It results from a correlation of country-related risks and business model-related risks in the areas of business and human rights. Based upon this, measures for affiliated companies of the Audi Group were defined and are being implemented gradually.

We create transparency with respect to the topic and publish a statement every year on measures and management approaches we have taken against modern slavery, for example as part of the “UK Modern Slavery Act 2015.”

The following complaint and whistleblowing mechanisms are available for potential corporate human rights violations:

• Whistleblower System
• Complaints mechanism for the supply chain and external contact points