We are two minutes late, but I think it was definitely worth waiting that time, actually
for many, many years, to welcome today Barbara Lambrecht for our lecture series Business
and Human Rights.
We've been in contact for at least two years.
Yes, since our last lecture.
And we felt it's so important to connect the academic debate with the practitioner debate
about an issue as important as business and human rights.
We really want to collaborate and we're happy that you're here.
We are still in the midst of a pandemic.
I'm having a mask here in my hand.
I will need to wear it once I'm at my place again.
So everybody else in the room, you know, we've checked your 2G status.
Don't take off your mask.
Check on with your phone to Darfich Rein.
Please remember to check out when you leave.
And other than that, put your phone please on mute.
Because we want to have the undivided attention to our guest speaker.
Now she will be able to tell you in much better detail why it's exciting to listen to her,
but maybe a few words on that person.
It's actually a homecoming.
Because Barbara Lambrecht is an alumni of FAU.
She graduated with a degree in Geosciences and Geophysics.
Then later also went into the field of management.
So we also have an academic link here and then went into the practice field.
And was with Volkswagen for more than 17 years.
30.
30 years.
No, I looked at the different stages, but it sounds, you know, like doing the same thing.
And that's completely false.
She did so many amazing different things.
She was in China for many years, added the sustainability function for Volkswagen, was
the environmental implementation officer.
Now is here today in her position as the coordinator for business and human rights with the Volkswagen
Group AG.
And we're really happy to have you.
Some rules for the audience.
We are recording this and zooming it to our guests who we will include later in the discussion.
Once we enter the discussion, we will stop the recording.
We want to have an open space here where we have a free discussion and we are very much
looking forward to.
Barbara, Landrecht, the floor is yours.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for the very friendly and warm welcome.
And for me, it's really a little bit like coming home because Nürnberg is also my hometown.
And I studied at the FAU in Erlangen.
So here it's for me really the first time to be here, but I'm very familiar overall
with the city and everything still much connected with my classmates and have been here, passed
by last October on the way to Italy.
So therefore I'm very happy to be invited and to give you some insights about the coordination
of business and human rights from a company's perspective, from an automotive company perspective
and why we are doing this and what we are doing.
And I'm also looking forward to our Q&A session at the end.
Happy to answer your questions as much as I can.
And yeah, let's get started.
Maybe for a first...
I have to activate the...
Now I should be good to go.
Maybe to give you only a little introduction to the company, what you see on the slide
is the headquarter building, which is based in Wolfsburg, North Germany, one hour by train
west from Berlin.
And to give you some figures, do I have to activate always?
Actually should be working.
I'm too far away maybe.
Try once more.
Now it should be working.
Okay.
Sorry.
So Volkswagen Group is called Group because it consists of multiple brands.
For sure some of you know the brand Volkswagen, which is the name giving brand, but also Audi
from Ingolstadt or Porsche from Stuttgart, from the truck side, MIN for example from
Munich.
Oskania from Sweden.
Also we have one motorcycle brand Ducati in the range and also really cool sports cars
from Bentley and Bugatti.
And as always, which is now natural, a very huge entity called financial services because
everything around the car has to be administrated also and you can finance your car, you can
lease it, you can rent it.
There are so many mobility options now under development.
They are all available at financial services.
And I see, it doesn't like me.
And to give you a little bit of figures only about production, these are the figures from
2020, the first year of the pandemic, but still kind of impressive.
We are actually always in the race with Toyota, who is number one on the world list.
Sometimes it's Toyota, sometimes it's us, so it depends.
And we are talking about more than 9 million cars last year, more or less around about
120 plants around the world and approximately 650,000 employees worldwide.
So what you can see here is the dimension of the company and this dimension has advantages
and disadvantages and it's kind of complex in the organization.
So you have to manage a topic always across 12 brands or 13 brands and worldwide.
So this you have to have in mind when you listen to the things I'm talking about.
Volkswagen takes the topic business and human rights very serious.
It's also caused by the history of the company, which was founded during the Second World
War.
And we had quite a huge number of forced laborers in the company during the war.
But we did not forget this part of our history.
It's still existing because we have a place of remembrance in the plant itself.
So one day, if you are planning to visit the factory and visit maybe Autostadt, which is
our biggest communication center directly at the headquarters site, you can visit also
this place of remembrance where you will receive a guided tour from my communication colleagues
who talk about how the people lived and worked at these times.
And we are still as a company connected with the families, with people who work there and
live there, or even with their relatives, their children and grandchildren.
So there is a connection to the house, even if it's a sad part of the history, but we
fully accept it and we are a state connected business.
And the history is one reason.
And what you are for sure aware of the legal developments.
And the topic of business and human rights is growing and growing and growing on the
legal side from the legal perspective.
So there are many facets and this is only a part of it, only a snapshot, so to say.
And what I would like to point out is one of the left side from the year 2011, they
were founded the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights.
This was so to say the foundation for our work until today, even if in Germany law is
coming up, which was decided summer this year and which will come into place in January
2023.
And I will talk about this law later.
But you can see this the time more and more fields and countries started to elaborate
laws on business and human rights.
Sometimes only perspective.
If you see the law of fishy laws as the main core point is no child work or you see the
UK Modern Slavery Act, the name already says it, it's about for slavery and other laws
in the Netherlands, for example, and also in Denmark.
And there are not only these kind of laws which are directly connected to business and
human rights, but also indirectly like reporting directives or like the taxonomy, which is
already online, so to say.
And where we have also to report how sustainable our products are in earlier times, you could
wrote many things about sustainability and about your climate protection activities,
environmental protection, CO2 minimization, et cetera.
But now it's becoming more and more regulated what you're talking about and what you're
writing about.
And I can tell you, I am responsible for the chapter for business and human rights in our
annual and sustainability report.
And every year there's the auditor coming and very detailed checking what have we written,
where are the substances for this, what documents can I deliver to prove that what we wrote
is okay.
And also this is now becoming a big part of the work.
And our auditor is especially critical because it's EY and EY is connected with the Wirecard
story.
So maybe they are very much in detail now checking whatever client they have.
And is there maybe the supply chain law?
And what you also can see, and this is becoming quite critical, are the sanction laws and
anti-sanction laws.
You might be aware of the political developments between the United States and China, for example.
And you can imagine I'm following China until today very intensively because I lived there
for six years.
And I really love the country and the people.
And it's a little bit closer to my heart than other countries maybe.
So I'm always following what is going on.
And I have still friends there and I'm connected until today.
And then you see this political developments and this is for a company also now becoming
not so easy because you are sitting sometimes like between two chairs.
And you are like a ball between governments.
And here we also have to be very careful and very sensitive, have a very clear understanding
about the contents of the legal requirements to hopefully satisfy both sides.
And there are other reasons why business and human rights is becoming more and more important.
One element is what you can see on the top left side is the National Action Plan for
Business and Human Rights in Germany, which is by the way not only existing in Germany,
but I think recently in more than 30 countries worldwide or even more.
There is a map where you can see the exact figure.
So what is the National Action Plan?
The National Action Plan is the idea to bring the UN guiding principles and its five core
elements alive.
And therefore the German government started an initiative in 2016 that companies should
take care of this topic.
I started my work on business and human rights already in 2017 parallel to my job as environmental
implementation officer during the US monitorship.
And this is why one of the reasons why I'm already implementing the basic elements of
the UN guiding principles in the company since years and how we do this, I will explain to
you later.
And we are also participating in the so-called sector dialogue of the automotive industry
for business and human rights.
So what is a sector dialogue?
The German government brought together the car companies, the OEMs, but also the supplier
companies, also civil societies with NGOs like Südwind or German Bocs or the German
Institute for Human Rights and also politics are joining this dialogue.
And in this dialogue, we are elaborating concepts, how to implement business and human rights
better in the company, or we are also developing kind of pilot projects altogether.
So the first phase of the dialogue will end of this year and continue with a second phase
next year.
And another point why this topic is so important, you can see on the top right, these are the
so-called sustainability ratings.
I'm assuming you might be very familiar with them, like sustainable litigates, for example,
or other standards.
And earlier times there was Ulkoom, which is now reframed from the naming here and now
Standard and Poor's is one of the most important ones.
So we in the company selected five of them where we said we would like to be in our top
position with the time in this sustainability rating.
And why?
Because investors always cross check how a company is performing on sustainability ratings
because they would like to have their money on the safe side, only in companies which
take care of a long-term approach under the ESG perspective.
So with our work, we already could improve our position in the ratings very well.
So this is also a kind of measure of the success, which is always important because sometimes
for management it's very difficult.
What is human rights and how does it, it's so soft.
How do you measure this?
A position in a sustainability rating is a very good measure point.
Another point is also again connected with finance, the international finance performance
standards.
And for example, the German government is also checking its responsibility if it gives
investment guarantees to companies.
They are also checking the companies whether they fulfill the IFC performance standards
in case they would like to give an investment guarantee or to end-length investment guarantee.
Yeah, last but not least, the non-financial reporting directive is already all these days
and under development, there is a new version coming up.
And here you also can see that we have to communicate about environmental matters, employees,
social human rights, and also the topic of corruption.
All in all, quite a lot of reasons why a company in general should take care of this topic.
So what have we done?
One of the basic elements from the UN guiding principles and also from the national action
plan is you have to have a declaration for business and human rights from your company.
Your board has to have a clear position on this topic and idea-wise has to lay it down,
written to sign it.
And this is something what we have, honestly, already since decades, which is called in
our company in a so-called social charter.
And this social charter is existing since I think around about 20 years.
And last year and the year prior, we further developed the social charter.
It was quite a lengthy process, took us one and a half years, but this is always, if you
are so big, you have always many departments which you have to, which are looking for also
engagement.
So always you have to think about the sustainability team.
You have to think about the HR team, about the purchasing team, and for sure also about
the works council, because the works council also has a clear opinion and a strong position
on social aspects.
And I'm very happy that our social charter is not only signed from the board, it's also
signed from our works council and on the world international level.
So this is very important, and if you would check our homepage, volkswagen.com, you can
find all these documents online.
We have a chapter, Business and Human Rights, German and English, and you can find all these
documents, these brochures, for example.
So this is the fundament for our social relationships with our works council, and it's, from our
point of view, extremely important also for international competitiveness.
If you are not fulfilling these basic principles as a company, you might be not successful
in the future.
This is what we are deeply convinced, and ESG is not only about environment, it's also
about the social aspect and the governance aspect, and we combine the social and the
governance aspect, which I will show to you later.
And we take the different social issues under account, and we have also a spirit of working
together here, of having also conflict management tools in a cooperative style.
And therefore, we are very happy that we could rework it, and we already on an exchange.
If I would maybe speak faster, then it would be different.
But anyhow, and here you can see we have as a content the basic human rights, which are
related to a company perspectives included.
We have this worldwide scope, so this is for our company and our so-called controlled entities,
which means our daughter companies where we have the full management responsibility.
And we clearly are also committed to different international documents, which are mentioned
in the Social Carta and which you can find here.
So you may for sure know most of them, I would assume, like the Declaration for Human Rights
or the OECD guidelines, the UN Global Compact and principles, for example, and again, the
UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, what you see here on the right side.
You may know the founder of the UN Guiding Principle, Professor John Raggi, passed away,
I think two months ago, something like this, and we as a company, we are a member of the
Global Business Initiative for Human Rights, and we do have our virtual member meetings
this week.
And we had one memorial session for Professor Raggi, who really laid the basis with this
document.
And I think for many, many people, for many companies, even for generations, even if a
law is coming up in different countries, the UN Guiding Principles are, from my point of
view, absolutely universal.
And how are they built up?
This is, we show it always like a house.
It's built up on three columns where you see the different duties.
So you see on the left side, the duty of the state to protect human rights.
You see the duty of companies to respect human rights, and you see the duties of states and
business for remedy access.
And here I also mentioned the five core elements.
I already spoke about the first one, the human rights policy statement.
And you also have to have procedures on the identification of potential impacts on human
rights, which is everything around risk management, risk analysis.
Risk management is the key element of the UN Guiding Principles.
Also measures toward of potential adverse impacts and review the effectiveness.
This is always included.
There's always a monitoring and improvement process a must have, because you can develop
something and it's okay for maybe one, two years, but maybe things change and you should
review and further develop and improve the year after.
You are able to report about what you're doing and you should have a grievance mechanism
or main element, very often a whistleblower system, something I will show you also later
how this is built up in our company.
So how are we bringing these elements alive?
You have only one chance to bring a topic cross-functional in a big company alive with
implementing it into the daily working processes.
There is no other chance.
You can talk much about things.
You can write articles about things.
You can have the CEO having speeches on topics.
It will not come alive if it's not implemented in the core daily working processes of the
company.
So this is what we are doing in this implementing the topic business and human rights into the
compliance management system of the company.
If you think of compliance management system, maybe you think of anti-money laundering,
anti-corruption prevention, you're thinking about fraud prevention, things like that.
These are the classic compliance elements.
Everyone knows them.
So this is why compliance is not on the priority list in a company as a working field on the
top list very often, because it's about prevention and it's about keeping legal and self-binding
requirements.
But with implementing the topic here, you will bring it alive.
So the first element and what you can see here, the inner circle, which is the light
gray, are the elements of compliance management system.
There's also, as always in Germany, there's a standard available about this.
So you can read everything in the IDV 980 about the elements and what functions they
have in detail.
And what you see on the outer circle are the elements coming out of the UN guiding principles.
So you can see that there's a strong overlapping and that we talk about more or less the same
elements, maybe something in a different range, but content wise the same.
So policies we already have with our social card.
Then we have the compliance objectives, which is in the human rights area, the list of salient
issues, which I will show you also.
And the third element is everything around the compliance risk management system.
I will explain afterwards.
And you have the compliance programs and processes like the grievance mechanism, the whistleblower
system, for example, or the consulting function, which is fulfilled with my department, for
example.
We have organization.
So we organize the topic also in the company via a group steering committee for business
and human rights.
I show you the organization map also later.
And we have trainings.
So we have BHR basic training, which is included in the code of conduct training.
And we have advanced training, which is now under further development again, and which
will become a web based training.
And we are communicating about this topic internally and externally.
We are nearly, I would say we are answering nearly every letter we receive, every request
from journalists, every study where we are requested, whether we are willing to participate,
we try as much as we can.
And especially journalists and also in these days, political players are interested to
understand how we bring business and human rights alive.
And last but not least, reporting and monitoring and improvement processes, which I already
mentioned.
So these are the topics which are most close to the company regarding the human rights.
There are so many human rights.
It's a wide range.
You know this.
Yeah.
But there are elements which are closer to a company, like the labor related elements,
like no forced labor, no child labor, good working conditions, freedom of association,
for example, in collective bargaining, everything around tolerance, diversity, protection of
vulnerable groups, no discrimination, tolerance of different viewpoints.
These are the basic elements here.
And for the security topic, safeguarding security, you will find in many big companies, because
we have our own security guards at the entrances, at the gates of our companies.
And you can imagine they might be very different, whether you are in India or in South Africa
or in Germany.
And no complicity to any unlawful action is sometimes people smile or wonder why do we
have this element here.
And this is because also of our history, because we have experience with this topic and companies
should be very much aware of this.
How are we managing the risk situation of business in human rights?
What you see here top right, top left is the World Bank.
And you see it colored in three different colors, which is green, yellow and orange.
And the coloring is based on the so-called Mabelcroft index, which has more than 30 subindices,
nearly one subindex for every element of human rights.
And it's describing the situation of a country under the human rights perspective.
And we are combining the country risk together with the business model risk.
You might imagine that there might be a different human rights situation, whether I have a company
with 8,000 employees in Brazil or whether I have an office with 20 employees of financial
services selling insurance or leasing contracts in our office in France, for example.
So based on this information, we developed an algorithm, which is also underlined with
some more additional information about, for example, the fragility index of a country
or whether this country has a national action plan on human rights or whether the country
has specific human rights, legal requirements.
And every entity from our company, which means every of our daughter companies where we have
the full management responsibility, will receive a so-called compliance measure set, which
is a set of so-called preventive measures.
Again, an important element of the UN Guarding Principles to make the company aware about
their duties.
And the companies, the entities have to implement this measure set.
They received it in summer.
They have to implement it until end of this year.
And from next year on, we will check whether they did it.
And first, there's a reporting template, but later on also there's an onsite visit and
also in our third step, there's an external audit.
And if you remember what I told you in the beginning, that we have so many brands and
so many entities that you have an idea.
I'm talking here about 800 companies.
800 this year received our compliance measure set.
So this is the dimension we have to handle.
Sometimes it would be easier if it would be only one brand, but since the company is very
international and widespread, it's quite a lot of work you have to organize and to manage.
And this is what I told you about compliance measure sets that they were filled, so to
say, according to the risk exposure.
So a company with a low risk exposure has to fulfill maybe only two requirements, but
a company with a high risk exposure has to fulfill maybe five, six or seven elements.
And what I also told you to present is the information about our whistleblower system.
And the whistleblower system is a very important thing because it gives people the opportunity
to call the company or to write the company and give hints about things where they think
they might be not okay.
And this is in the first step for hints about employees of the company.
And for this, we have the system.
Also if you go to the website and put the whistleblower system in, whistleblower for
example, something like this, you will be connected with the site.
You can give your hints in every language, 24 hour also telephone hotline, and you can
give it anonymous or with name as you like.
And we are very happy that in these days, more than 80% of the hints are with name.
Or you don't need to mention your name, but you can also give an email address so that
you are able to answer the questions my colleagues from the whistleblower team and from the investigation
team might have, because every hint will be followed up.
And if there are topics coming up about whatever, if it's about environmental, it goes to the
environmental team to check what is going on here.
If it's about HR related topic, it goes to the HR team.
If it's about business and human rights, it comes to my team.
So this is organized through the whole company.
Every person giving a hint will receive an answer.
Definitely.
And you can do it via the system.
You can also call the so-called ombudsman.
These are two external lawyers.
You find also all contact details in the web, which is kind of a more neutral function,
if you like.
And there are also the connection details for hints regarding supplier companies.
This is also very important that our purchasing sustainability team has also processes to
handle these hints.
This is very important that every hint finds, so to say, the connecting link in the company
where it will be worked on.
And this is a very important point.
And this system was massively stretched from the US monitor.
All our compliance management systems were further developed in these three years massively.
That was really extremely.
I don't know if everybody knows the background of the monitoring.
Maybe you can explain that in two, three seconds because I see that's very important.
You might have heard of the so-called diesel gate issue, which is about the CO2 emissions
of our diesel products, which came up in the US.
And assuming you are very familiar with this topic, coming up in September 2015, which
went through media PR and through the courts also even in these days.
And one reaction of the EPA, of the environmental authority in the United States was to send
a US monitor team to our company to check our compliance management systems.
This was a period of three years.
We had up to 100 people in-house and we had six working groups and one was the working
group environmental issues.
So everything around the environment not coming out of the exhaust pipe.
For this we had a separate working group, but I was heading the working group environmental
issues.
So I'm very familiar with this whole story and yeah, interesting times I have to say.
And one element also our policy documents, very familiar.
You have for sure heard of a code of conduct.
Nearly every company has a code of conduct about their values and what is important from
their point of view.
Our social character, I already explained.
And we also have the group policies, which give standards on group level, which every
of our brands has to take over and develop their brand standard according on the group
policy.
And we also have a code of conduct for business partners, which is a mandatory part of all
contracts with our suppliers.
And how did we organize ourselves in the company?
Because everyone should have a clear understanding.
And you can find here on the base level, the brand level, where you have our DCO organization,
our division and compliance officer.
So one for Volkswagen, one for Seat, one for Audi and so on and so on.
And we have things that they are colored in blue and you have the black elements, which
are the colleagues in purchasing, for example, or in HR or in environmental team.
And then we have this on the group level because the Volkswagen AG has a group structure like
a holding a little bit similar to a holding.
And this is the level where I'm working on and which is the second blue box.
And on the top level, you have the board members.
So our topic is reporting to our board member for integrity and law.
And as you can see on the right hand, we have the group steering committee for business
and human rights.
So all division and compliance officers and all main group functions are participants
in this group steering committee.
And we will hear each other every second month with a committee session and the other second
month with an information call.
And on the right hand description of the different elements.
And last but not least, what is very important is, as you can imagine, for sure, the supply
chain.
And I'm very happy that we have our own team in purchasing, the sustainability team is
in purchasing, which is taking care of the ESG topics in the supply chain.
And as we have the compliance management system, the integration of business and human rights,
also in the purchasing area, they have a business and human rights system, which is built up
of the three elements, prevent, detect and react.
What is behind prevent is for sure the integration of sustainability into the contracts.
One element is the code of conduct for business partners, for example, but also training and
capacity building, because it's very important for us to have good suppliers and multiple
suppliers because if you depend only on one supplier, you're always depending.
And if the supplier has a problem, you have a problem, as we can see also recently in
these days.
The detect system is risk assessment.
Every supplier or every company who would love to be a supplier has to go on our data
bank and fulfill a questionnaire, answering questions about ESG topics.
And react is also organized in case they receive hints.
There's also a so-called ad hoc process where people, where the colleagues immediately take
action and the result could be corrective action plans for the supplying company.
And another element, which is extremely important in the purchasing areas are the raw materials.
You know all the stories about child work in the cobalt mines in Congo, for example,
or about lithium mining in Chile and all the other stuff.
So the colleagues made a risk matrix.
What are the most important raw materials and most risky raw materials?
Take the 12 of them and have special dedicated activities for the materials.
My colleague, for example, also visited the Congo two years ago.
And the colleagues had been the first one in the German automotive industry who published
the Responsible Raw Material Report 2020.
The report was published spring this year.
Again, you can find it on our website.
Yeah.
And the topic about the German due diligence law keeps us busy.
This is why I'm so double busy these days.
I'm always busy, but these days I'm kind of even more busy because we are preparing the
company for this upcoming law.
I'm assuming you might be aware of the main elements.
Maybe I explained them a little bit.
So the law is valid for companies with minimum 3000 employees from 2023 on and for companies
with minimum 1000 employees from 2024 on.
What is the content?
The content are the labor related human rights.
So this is about child labor, forced labor, good working conditions and freedom of association
and collective bargaining.
These are the core elements.
And there are also three elements of environmental protection, including which is protecting
as always soil, water, air, and also fulfilling three dedicated requirements, legal requirements
which are connected with, oh, what is Quicksilver in English?
Mercury or Quicksilver?
Mercury, typically mercury.
Mercury.
Okay.
Mercury specific regulations.
And the law is called supply chain law, which is a totally misleading title because it's
not about the supply chain.
It's about the value chain, which is your supply chain, your own production, and also
the face of selling the products to the customer.
And this is valid for you as a company, for your daughter companies, and for your suppliers
where you have a direct contract with.
And what do you have to do?
What are the duties of the company?
And now you will hear again the same duties you heard before.
You have to have a policy statement.
You have to establish your risk management system.
You have to have prevention measures and you have a complaining procedure, which is our
whistleblower system, for example.
And you have to report about this whole thing and you have to monitor and improve your system
and have to check whether it is effective.
So again, remember the UN guiding principles.
Remember the elements of the compliance management system.
And what a surprise.
Now you find them again in the new law.
So they made it not too easy for us, I have to say, because the sentences of the UN guiding
principles are so-called soft law.
But the Germans and laws are very complex topic.
And so there are some sentences in it where we will see already long reports and summaries
and explanations from lawyers, how you can interpret them.
And this is really sometimes very challenging.
And one of my team members, she's a lawyer for human rights and she is since months reading,
you can write one page about nearly every word in this law.
But nevertheless, the big elements are clear.
And this is why we feel already prepared for the law.
We have the basic processes, but we are further developing according to the more detailed
regulation we can find here.
And again, there is continuously documentation necessary because there might be people who
bring us to court and asking us or claiming that we have done this and that, or maybe
we have not done, have not fulfilled our duties.
So therefore we have to prepare also the company and document what we are doing.
So the one who is writing is staying and documentation is the element out of this.
And there are also liability risks.
There are fines possible.
And the up to two percentage of the average annual group turnover, which is in our case
always a very big number.
So immediately there is a risk visible because again, you can measure it in euros in this
case, which is very good if you talk to your risk management colleagues.
Why do they put this law as a risk into our risk system?
Yeah, maybe because there's a liability risk and maybe there could be fines.
So this is why this topic is extremely important.
So these are the basic elements.
And the last chapter, so to say, is what is also important if you talk about business
and human rights.
If you see the development of the public opinion today, many people are much more sensitive
now about human rights.
I also did many years market research and people always said, yes, I would pay 50 cents
more for product if it's local or green or bio.
What is the reality?
They don't pay it.
And this is also the reality in human rights.
They all stand up for it.
What is good?
Yeah, I'm myself, I'm doing this also in the company.
I'm like the internal NGO a little bit.
Yeah.
But this is very important that this topic is more and more in the media.
And you always have to cross check whenever there's a crisis in a country, I immediately
have to cross check, are we selling cars in this country?
Are we maybe related to something?
And if you think of the Belarus topic, as soon as this topic started, we received pictures
where demonstrators were brought into cars to drive them to prison and the cars were
our products.
So we had to cross check immediately, are we selling cars there?
Who is selling the cars for us?
Are they selling to government related persons?
And also a short time later, the sanctions from the UK.
So you have to take action anyhow from a sanctions perspective.
But we are already taking prior to sanctions action because we are connected to the UN
guiding principles.
And this means you should not have a linkage to any human rights violation.
So this is why we have to take action at these points.
And this is from my point of view, only possible if you have a culture in your company of integrity.
And this is a very important aspect and was also heavily stretched during our years after
the diesel crisis.
And we are very proud today that we have our integrity standards, that we have our values,
that they are rolled out to all entities and that they are not dead but alive.
And we have our own programs for this.
And also our board member for integrity and law is communicating about this topic regularly.
So this is very important that you have this culture, that you have a kind of cooperation
and a kind of common understanding what the value system of the company is.
And this is from my point of view, also a basis, a foundation for the work we are doing
here.
And this is the slide with two clicks.
If you would like to get a quick answer on these questions, how many slaves are working
for you?
Go to the web.
Give this title a name.
And then you have some choices where you find a questionnaire with maybe 10 or 12 questions
asking you about your daily behavior.
They go with you into your bathroom and check what is in your bathroom.
They go with you into your kitchen and check what herbs, for example, do you have or what
perfumes you are using, how big is the home in which you are living, what kind of clothes
are you buying, what materials are they made of.
And this gives you a kind of impression where you can look in your daily life for human
rights aspects.
10, 12 questions, 10, 12 minutes.
Oh, technical digits, technical gadgets, also a perfect example.
And this is so far from my side.
And now we are coming to the second part, which is the Q&A session.
And if you wonder which room is this, this is in Geneva, the auditorium where the UN
guiding principles have been decided and where we are normally every year in November for
the three days worldwide gathering of the business and human rights people.
And unfortunately, again, this year, the second time only online, but better than nothing,
happy that we still can meet and greet in a virtual way.
Yeah.
And now I'm keen to listen to your questions.