Article 8Identifying and assessing actual and potential adverse impacts

1. Member States shall ensure that companies take appropriate measures to identify and assess actual and potential adverse impacts arising from their own operations or those of their subsidiaries and, where related to their chains of activities, those of their business partners, in accordance with this Article.

2. As part of the obligation set out in paragraph 1, taking into account relevant risk factors, companies shall take appropriate measures to:

(a)

map their own operations, those of their subsidiaries and, where related to their chains of activities, those of their business partners, in order to identify general areas where adverse impacts are most likely to occur and to be most severe;

(b)

based on the results of the mapping as referred to in point (a), carry out an in-depth assessment of their own operations, those of their subsidiaries and, where related to their chains of activities, those of their business partners, in the areas where adverse impacts were identified to be most likely to occur and most severe.

3. Member States shall ensure that, for the purposes of identifying and assessing the adverse impacts referred to in paragraph 1 based on, where appropriate, quantitative and qualitative information, companies are entitled to make use of appropriate resources, including independent reports and information gathered through the notification mechanism and the complaints procedure provided for in Article 14.

4. Where information necessary for the in-depth assessment provided for in paragraph 2, point (b), can be obtained from business partners at different levels of the chain of activities, the company shall prioritise requesting such information, where reasonable, directly from business partners where the adverse impacts are most likely to occur.