Navigating the <scp>EU</scp> Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive: How Multinational Enterprises Approach Regulatory Familiarization in the Chocolate Sector

ABSTRACT Adopted in 2024, the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (EUCS3D, alternatively EUCSDDD) instructs member states to regulate human rights and environmental due diligence across business operations and their global value chains. Businesses started to familiarize themselves with the new directive to develop future compliance strategies. Despite its importance, the familiarization process has received little attention in research. Through interviews with employees and legal intermediaries, this paper investigates how multinational enterprises in the chocolate sector experienced this process. Drawing from socio‐legal theory, the findings show that business behavior adapts to shifts in regulatory governance that underpin key concepts of the EUCS3D, such as due diligence . Although the impact of those changes on the rights situation across global value chains remains uncertain, this paper contributes valuable insights for governance and compliance research. For practitioners, it underlines the importance of reliable transposition of rules for business, of multi‐partite negotiation in compliance‐relevant processes, and that appropriate regulatory governance may ease resistance to new regulation in interplay with business and global value chain context.