Responding to an EUFLR request for information

The preliminary phase begins with a letter. The lead authority asks what you have done to identify, prevent, mitigate or bring to an end forced labour in your chain, and gives you 30 working days. It then has 30 working days to decide whether there is a substantiated concern.

Article 17 tells the authority what to weigh: the due diligence carried out, any remediation, and any other steps taken. The Guidelines add what it may ask for — policies and training, risk assessments, multi-tier supplier maps, purchase orders and invoices, chain-of-custody, facility geolocation, questionnaire evidence, remediation records — and warn that an inability to provide traceability information counts against you and that non-cooperation may itself be treated as evidence. The platform's evidence file is that list, per product line, in the Guidelines' order: each item present, partial or missing, with its grade and its source, exportable as one dated bundle. When the letter arrives the clock on that screen starts, the gap list becomes the plan for the remaining days, and the file goes out at the deadline with whatever is present and the gaps stated as gaps. The audit trail goes with it, because the dated sequence showing the screening ran and the requests went out before the letter is the strongest thing in the reply.