...The BMW Group is a pioneer in terms of environmental and social standards in its supplier network. Already since 2014, all direct suppliers of the BMW Group have been contractually obliged to comply with human rights and extended environmental and social standards, as well as to introduce management systems for occupational health and safety and environmental protection. Biodiversity and deforestation also play an important role in these standards. All requirements that we contractually commit to our direct suppliers must also be contractually passed on to sub-suppliers. We regularly monitor compliance with the requirements through various measures. In the event of discrepancies, we evaluate them, develop appropriate measures together with the suppliers if necessary, and resolve the discrepancies.

With regard to the sourcing of leather from South America, the BMW Group already took initial measures several years ago and began to restructure the leather supply chains. In recent years we have steadily reduced the sourcing of leather from South America, including Paraguay. From 2023 on we will no longer have leather from Paraguay in our supply chain.

We have already taken the first Earthsight report (published in 2020) very seriously and have engaged external companies to provide transparency down to the origin of our leather supply chain. For this we worked with Satelligence (https://satelligence.com/) and Sourcemap (https://sourcemap.com/), who used satellite data, big data analysis and risk assessments for the evaluation. Both partners have confirmed that our supply chain is not related to deforestation in Paraguay. Earthsight's accusations are not accurate...