Global Witness is pleased to have contributed to the development of the pilot Alignment Assessment of Industry Programmes with the OECD Minerals Guidance. This assessed five prominent industry schemes against the OECD Due Diligence Guidance, which is the leading international standard for the responsible sourcing of minerals...We remain concerned, however, that the findings of today’s report may be misconstrued, and that the tools developed may, in the future, be used as a shortcut to compliance in place of a more meaningful examination of mineral supply chains...The five industry schemes involved in this pilot assessment have made significant changes to their paper-based standards, bringing them further in line with the OECD’s standard. We hope the methodology and tools developed will continue to yield information that drives progress and reform in this area. But in order to secure the value and credibility of this information, it is critical that also the limitations of these new instruments are recognised and acknowledged. The Alignment Assessment was designed and intended to assess industry schemes, not their individual member companies...The European Union must be especially vigilant to these limitations when developing their methodology for recognising industry schemes under the EU’s new Responsible Sourcing Regulation and when populating the accompanying list of responsible smelters and refiners...Global Witness also cautions against a continued reliance on audits—as runs throughout the Methodology and Tool—both by companies wishing to demonstrate compliance and by assessors wishing to verify it...Today’s report appropriately notes the progress that participating schemes have made during the assessment period. Bridging the gap between these paper-based requirements and their implementation by individual companies now remains an important challenge.