The high-level importance of sustainability in DB Group, with its aspects that fall within the environmental, social and governance dimensions, is reflected, for example, in the anchoring of climate protection, but also of social issues such as employee satisfaction or the share of women in leadership in the Strong Rail strategy. Sustainability is also anchored in the variable remuneration of the Management Board members, executives and other employee groups.

• The Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) is responsible for sustainability issues. The office is held by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of DB AG. The CSO’s perspective is thus incorporated in a very central role in all important Group decisions. With regard to climate-related decisions, the CEO is also significantly involved in strategy development in his dual role. In 2025, the Management Board defined the climate protection and climate resilience areas of action as sustainability focus areas. The CEO is also responsible for occupational safety issues. Responsibility for employee issues and compliance lies with the Management Board member for Human Resources and Legal Affairs.
• The overall coordination of Group-wide sustainability issues is the responsibility of the Head of Sustainability and Environment, who is assigned to the Group Strategy division. The Head of Group Strategy is the highest function with responsibility for sustainability-related issues below the Management Board, and reports directly to the CEO. Specific tasks include, among other things, the definition of the sustainability strategy, associated Group-wide targets and metrics, their planning and monitoring, and the planning, management and implementation of Group-wide transformation projects.

Operational responsibility for specialist sustainability issues lies with the respective specialist departments or business units.

• Group management focuses its compliance work on centralized governance activities, in particular. Operational responsibility is exercised in the business units and service units by implementing the minimum Compliance Management System (CMS) requirements of Group management. Adjustments to the structural and procedural design of the CMS are planned for 2026.
• Employee issues are supported by the Human Resources (HR) Group functions within Group management. Group-wide implementation is performed in coordination with the business units. Aspects of occupational health and safety are centralized. The business units integrate and take these into account in their business activities within the respective management systems.

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The 2025 Annual Report refers to the reporting/calendar year 2025. To enable a comparison of the figures, values from the financial years 2024 and 2023 are also presented for the majority of the key figures. The Annual Report is published annually. The 2025 Annual Report is to be published on March 27, 2026 (2024 Integrated Report: March 27, 2025). It addresses the main stakeholder groups of DB Group and covers all material economic, social and environmental aspects. All fully consolidated companies of DB Group (excluding discontinued operations) are included in the reporting. Deviations from this reporting scope or period are noted as such.

The data collection methods and calculation bases for the data in the Annual Report are based on relevant standards:

• European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS): As part of its Annual Report, DB Group begins reporting with reference to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) from the 2025 financial year, which is not part of the audited consolidated financial statements. Our reporting with reference to the ESRS is based on ESRS Set 1 dated December 22, 2023, and in some cases already on the proposed adjustments as part of the technical opinion of the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) on the draft simplified ESRS dated December 3, 2025. ESRS reporting for the 2025 financial year is, therefore, not based on a uniform ESRS basis, is not complete in the sense of ESRS and has not been audited by an auditing firm.
• EU Taxonomy: As part of our reporting with reference to the ESRS, we also disclose the “environmentally sustainable” share of our revenues, capital expenditures (CapEx) and operating expenses (OpEx) in accordance with the EU Taxonomy Regulation.
• UN Global Compact: The Annual Report also includes information on the implementation of the ten principles of the UN Global Compact (UNGC).

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With this sustainability statement, DB Group begins voluntary reporting based on the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), which is not part of the audited consolidated financial statements. Our reporting with reference to the ESRS is based on ESRS Set 1 dated December 22, 2023 and, in some cases, already on the proposed adjustments as part of the technical advice of the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) on the draft of the simplified ESRS dated December 3, 2025:

• Preparation of the sustainability statement on the basis of ESRS Set 1.
• Application of the ESRS draft of December 3, 2025 for all disclosure requirements in ESRS 2 (the Minimum Disclosure Requirements or General Disclosure Requirements are reported in the topic standards depending on the ESRS basis of the chapter), the new disclosure requirements E1-2 (Identification of climate-related risks and scenario analysis) and E1-3 (Resilience in relation to climate change), the disclosure requirements for the topic of health and safety in S1 and all disclosure requirements for DB-specific topics. In the case of disclosure requirements prepared on the basis of ESRS Set 1, some datapoints were not reported that have been removed according to the ESRS draft of December 3, 2025.
• Absent (or incomplete) reporting of individual datapoints.

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To determine our material topics in our own business activities and along our value chain in 2025, we used the results of the double materiality assessment from 2024 as a basis and made selective adjustments and improvements. In 2025, no overall revaluation of the IROs (Impacts, Risks, Opportunities) was carried out, but we took a more systematic look at our value chain, took into account initial findings from the application of the ESRS and made evaluation adjustments in individual cases. In addition, the IROs of the discontinued operation DB Schenker, which was sold in 2025, were eliminated from the results.

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