Seminar: Digital Regulatory Infrastructures of Due Diligence

Guest: Dr Klaas Eller

Abstract 

The practical implementation of corporate due diligence legislation by companies and enforcement bodies is increasingly marked by a digital turn. The substantive meaning, practical viability, and eventual effectiveness of due diligence duties are shaped not only by regulators and regulated entities but also by technology providers and digital tools whose methodologies mediate what compliance entails. The European Union has actively embraced this techno-legal mode of governance. Across several key instruments of the Green Deal, European regulators promote digital reporting, tracing, analytics, and data-exchange platforms as integral components of regulatory oversight. These systems function not merely as administrative supports but as regulatory infrastructures that structure how due diligence is operationalized. This presentation examines how digital tools and technologies are embedded in the implementation of selected Green Deal legislative instruments. Through a comparative analysis across these instruments, it shows how the EU mobilizes technological systems to enact its sustainability agenda, and how companies, in turn, rely on these systems to meet expanding due diligence demands. The analysis highlights how the digital turn in due diligence reorders relations among regulators, companies, and intermediaries, raising wider questions about interpretative authority, transparency, and the political economy of contemporary sustainability regulation.

Partners
This seminar is made possible by generous contributions from the Centre for European Studies at Lund University and the Lund University Human Rights Profile Area.