Tool Technical facility on deforestation-free value chains

Legality Due Diligence Navigator

Published 1 September 2025 By Alice Bisiaux

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The Legality Due Diligence Navigator provides a methodology to develop legality due diligence tools under the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). It sets out how to map national legal requirements, assess their implementation in practice, and translate them into practical recommendations for verifying compliance.

Developed by the European Forest Institute (EFI), the Legality Due Diligence Navigator is grounded in a multistakeholder process that builds consensus on:

Which national legal requirements are relevant to production and trade.
Which due diligence actions are most appropriate to verify compliance.

By engaging all relevant supply-chain stakeholders at the national level—including authorities, producers, private sector and civil society—the Legality Due Diligence Navigator establishes a common baseline for operators, competent authorities, regulators and other actors. This shared reference framework facilitates due diligence and controls, reduces perceived risks, and can enhance the competitiveness of producing origins.

The methodology encapsulated in the Legality Due Diligence Navigator was developed in cooperation with Preferred by Nature during the development of a legality due diligence tool for cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire from 2024-2025. It was simultaneously applied in Cameroon and Ghana, also to develop legality due diligence tools for cocoa. The methodology was then applied in 2025 in several countries in Latin America to develop tools on cocoa, coffee and palm oil.