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Our Strong Rail strategy also forms the overarching framework for our reporting. We are also reliant on the support and acceptance of our stakeholders in order to successfully implement our strategy. In 2019, as part of a comprehensive materiality analysis (2019 Integrated Report), we therefore asked them for an assessment of 16 important areas of action for sustainability in DB Group. These areas of action reflect the focus points of our strategy and supplement it with other topics that our stakeholders consider relevant. In 2023, the updated material topic set from the previous year underwent a validation process:

• Using an online questionnaire, we asked DB internal representatives of our eight most important stakeholder groups whether they considered that the material topics established in the previous year still applied. This was confirmed.
• In addition, the material topics were validated in view of their business relevance through a management survey with selected executives.
• In addition to confirming the material topics, the stakeholder representatives had the opportunity to propose additional topics, which they also viewed as important, either from the existing 16 fields of action or freely. For these topics, the stakeholder representatives had to describe the associated effects, distinguish between posi­­tive and negative, and allocate each of them to either the economy, environment or society dimension. In addition, the stakeholder representatives assessed the impacts ac­cording to how preventable, significant and extensive they are and how likely they consider them to occur.
• The survey results were quantitatively evaluated and qualitatively evaluated in a workshop with experts from the “Sustainability and Environment Strategy and Reporting” and “Investor Relations and Sustainable Finance” departments and then determined as the material topic set with the final involvement of the CSO/CEO.

Our sustainability topics are made up of:

• Key topics according to the GRI: Supplemented by the additional topic of attractive employer and job security since the previous year.
• Topics from the transparency aspiration: Arise from our comprehensive transparency aspiration towards our stakeholders.
• Additional topics: Supplemented on the basis of an internal assessment of their significance.