Our Shared Responsibility.

Our Expectations of Business Partners

Integrity forms the foundation of our business activities. An integral part of this is that we abide by the law, respect basic ethical values, and behave in a sustainable manner. At Mercedes-Benz Group we promote a corporate culture in which we act in accordance with this value concept. We expect integrity from all our employees as well as from our business partners.

Integrity Checks on Our Business Partners

When selecting our direct business partners, we make sure that they comply with the law and follow ethical principles. We also continue to do so over the course of our business relationship. This is why both, our potential and existing business partners, are subject to risk-based integrity checks. Our aim is to identify possible integrity violations early on. We continuously improve our Due Diligence and monitoring processes.

If a partner fails to comply with our standards, we reserve the right to terminate the cooperation or the selection process.

We regularly inform our employees about the standards for our business partners and their selection processes. In this respect, we created an explanatory film to show how the integrity check on our sales partners works.

Doing the Right Thing Together: Business Partner Standards

With the Business Partner Standards, Mercedes-Benz Group explains its ethical principles and the respective expectations of its business partners. We actively promote their compliance and demand this also from our partners. The Business Partner Standards are aimed at all business partners worldwide.

Responsible Sourcing Standards

Our Responsible Sourcing Standards  summarize all the sustainable business requirements for our suppliers and convey our expectations regarding working conditions, respecting and upholding human rights, environmental protection, safety, as well as business ethics and compliance. The standards are basis for business relationships with suppliers worldwide. Our direct suppliers are required to not only to comply with our sustainability standards, but also to communicate them to their employees and to pass them on to their own suppliers. We support our direct suppliers in this with targeted information and qualification. The main communication platform for suppliers is the Mercedes-Benz Supplier Portal .

Increasing Awareness: The Compliance Awareness Module

Based on the Responsible Sourcing Standards, the Business Partner Standards and our Integrity Code, we provide our sales partners and suppliers with a “Compliance Awareness Module ”. This web-based module is intended to show our partners which principles in terms of integrity and compliance guide us at Mercedes-Benz Group and what expectations we associate with it. At the same time, we want to increase our business partners’ awareness of the correct handling of possible integrity and compliance risks.