Supply Chain Risk Management in Europe: Insights From the 2026 Risk & Resilience Study
Supply chain risk is becoming more complex as regulatory, environmental, social, and operational pressures converge. Our Global Supply Chain Risk & Resilience Study 2026 shows that these risks are already having significant business consequences across Europe, highlighting the need to move beyond compliance toward more integrated, proactive, and resilient risk management.
Why Is Supply Chain Risk Management Becoming a Business Priority in Europe?
Supply chain risk management has become a business priority as companies face an increasingly interconnected mix of geopolitical tensions, extreme weather events, regulatory change, human rights concerns, supplier dependencies, and economic uncertainty. These risks can emerge rapidly and affect sourcing, production, costs, and business continuity across complex supplier networks.
“Over the past three years, 79% of companies have suffered significant financial or operational impacts from sustainability-related risks in their supply chains. That should put to rest the idea that sustainability is merely a compliance exercise - it is a business resilience imperative that demands a broader view of the risk landscape.”
– Nick Heine, Chief Customer Advisor, IntegrityNext
For European companies, sustainability-related risks are an important part of this changing landscape.
The Global Supply Chain Risk & Resilience Study 2026: European Perspective conducted by IntegrityNext in collaboration with international management and technology consultancy BearingPoint, surveyed 394 professionals across Europe, primarily from procurement, sustainability, compliance, and risk management.
The results point to an important shift: sustainability-related supply chain risk can no longer be viewed primarily through the lens of regulatory compliance.
In fact, 79% of surveyed companies experienced at least one sustainability-related supply chain risk with significant financial or operational impact over the past three years.
The question for companies is therefore evolving. It is no longer only: Are we compliant? Increasingly, it is: Do we understand our supply chain risk well enough to anticipate disruption and respond effectively?
Which Supply Chain Risks Are Already Affecting European Companies?
Regulatory and compliance risks remain the most frequently reported category of supply chain risk. 43% of respondents said these risks had caused significant financial or operational impact.
But the risk landscape extends considerably further.
Climate-related risks, including physical and transition risks, were reported by 30% of companies. Business ethics and corruption, as well as human and labor rights violations, were each cited by more than one fifth of respondents.
These findings illustrate why treating sustainability primarily as a compliance category can be limiting. A climate event, human rights issue, or governance failure in the supply chain can quickly become an operational or financial problem – affecting sourcing, production, costs, delivery schedules, reputation, or business continuity.
The boundaries between sustainability risk and conventional supply chain risk are therefore becoming increasingly difficult to draw.
This also creates an opportunity. Many capabilities developed to meet sustainability requirements – including supplier data collection, risk assessments, traceability, monitoring, and supplier engagement, can provide valuable inputs for broader risk management.
Rather than maintaining separate processes for individual risks and regulatory requirements, companies can connect these capabilities to build a more complete picture of supplier risk and overall exposure.
Why Is Multi-Tier Supply Chain Visibility Critical for Risk Management?
Companies cannot effectively manage supply chain risks they cannot see.
Yet the study suggests that multi-tier supply chain visibility remains one of the most significant weaknesses in European supply chains. 60% of respondents have no sustainability risk visibility beyond Tier 1, while only 10% report visibility across multiple supplier tiers.
This creates a potentially significant supply chain risk blind spot.
Modern supply chains can include thousands of suppliers, production sites, intermediaries, and sub-suppliers. Critical dependencies and sustainability risks may sit several tiers removed from the company purchasing the final component or material.
A company may have strong insights into its direct suppliers and still have limited knowledge of the conditions, dependencies, or emerging threats further upstream.
That matters both for regulatory compliance and for resilience.
Greater multi-tier supply chain visibility can help companies understand where critical materials originate, identify concentrations and dependencies, monitor emerging risks, and determine where deeper investigation or supplier engagement may be necessary.
As supply chains become more interconnected, multi-tier visibility is therefore becoming relevant not only for due diligence, but also for understanding where operational vulnerabilities and critical dependencies may exist.
How Can Companies Move From Supply Chain Compliance to Resilience?
Awareness of supply chain risk is widespread. The more difficult challenge is translating awareness into a consistent supply chain risk management operating model.
The study shows that 42% of surveyed companies have integrated sustainability-related risks into key processes or fully embedded them in strategic decision-making. At the same time, many organizations continue to manage these risks through siloed functions, ad hoc initiatives, or separate processes.
Moving from supply chain compliance toward resilience means connecting risk management more closely across procurement, sustainability, compliance, supply chain management, risk management, and other relevant functions.
Several capabilities become important:
- Reliable and centrally accessible supply chain data
- Continuous risk identification and monitoring
- Effective supplier engagement and collaboration
- Cross-functional access to risk insights
- Clear processes for translating insights into mitigation measures
- Scenario planning and forward-looking risk analysis
- Flexible sourcing and supplier strategies
Some of these practices are already relatively widespread. Others remain less established. For example, regular risk identification and assessments are used by more than half of respondents, while only around one third use scenario planning and forward-looking risk analysis.
That gap highlights the next step in supply chain risk management: moving from identifying and responding to existing problems toward anticipating what could happen next.
The shift is ultimately from managing sustainability risks as a separate workstream to making them part of how the organization evaluates suppliers, sourcing decisions, dependencies, and disruption.
How is AI Changing Supply Chain Risk Management?
Artificial intelligence is also beginning to influence how companies identify and manage supply chain risk.
More than half of the European companies surveyed – 52% – are already actively using AI in some form for sustainability-related supply chain risk management, from pilot projects to deployment in selected processes.
However, broad adoption should not be confused with maturity.
Only 8% have scaled AI across multiple workflows or achieved end-to-end integration.
This creates a significant gap between experimentation and operational use.
Current AI applications in supply chain risk management include automating data collection and validation, continuously monitoring risk signals, supporting supplier follow-up, identifying patterns, and helping organizations anticipate emerging risks.
These capabilities could become increasingly valuable as companies attempt to monitor large, complex supplier networks. Manual processes have inherent limitations when teams must evaluate substantial volumes of supplier information, external risk signals, regulatory developments, and other data on an ongoing basis.
AI can support this work by helping organizations process information at scale and direct attention toward areas requiring human judgment or action.
The next stage of AI adoption will therefore be less about experimentation itself and more about whether companies can embed these capabilities into everyday risk management and decision-making.
How Can Supply Chain Risk Management Create Business Value?
The business case for stronger supply chain risk management ultimately extends beyond avoiding negative outcomes.
At a time when budgets are under pressure, companies increasingly need to demonstrate that investments in sustainability, technology, and risk management generate tangible business value.
Here, the study reveals a significant measurement gap.
While 83% of surveyed organizations report positive impacts from their supply chain sustainability efforts, systematic measurement remains far less common.
Only 14% systematically measure and track the business value generated by these initiatives. A further 29% measure it partially, while many organizations rely on qualitative assessments or do not measure value at all.
Companies that understand whether sustainability and risk management initiatives improve efficiency, reduce costs, strengthen resilience, or support better decision-making are better positioned to evaluate investments and communicate their value internally.
It also changes the sustainability conversation.
Rather than asking only what a company must spend to meet regulatory requirements, leaders can begin asking what capabilities those investments create – and how those capabilities can support procurement, risk management, operational performance, and resilience.
In this way, impact measurement can help shift the internal conversation from the cost of sustainability initiatives toward the financial, operational, and resilience-related value they may create.
What Is the Next Step for Supply Chain Risk Management in Europe?
The findings suggest that European companies have already built important foundations for stronger supply chain risk management. Sustainability risk is widely recognized, regulatory compliance is firmly established as a priority, and technologies such as AI are gaining traction.
The next challenge is integrating these capabilities into a more cohesive risk management approach.
Companies increasingly need to connect sustainability data, supply chain visibility, supplier engagement, risk monitoring, and strategic decision-making into a more coherent approach.
That means moving:
- from Tier 1 visibility toward deeper supply chain transparency
- from isolated sustainability processes toward integrated risk management
- from reactive monitoring toward anticipation and early warning
- from activity-based sustainability metrics toward measurable business impact
- from isolated AI use cases toward scalable decision support
This does not make compliance less important. Instead, it broadens the value companies can derive from the capabilities they have built to meet regulatory requirements.
The organizations that can identify vulnerabilities earlier, connect risk signals across their supplier networks, and translate those insights into coordinated action will be better equipped to navigate an increasingly complex risk environment.
2026 Benchmark: Explore the Supply Chain Risk & Resilience Study
The Global Supply Chain Risk & Resilience Study 2026 is structured in three parts: Global Results (incl. the United States), European Results, and DACH Results. Explore each benchmark to compare how companies are approaching supply chain risk, resilience, visibility, and AI across markets.
Explore Global Results Explore European Results Explore DACH Results
Frequently Asked Questions: Supply Chain Risk Management
1. How are sustainability risks connected to supply chain risk?
Sustainability risks can have direct financial and operational consequences. Examples include extreme weather affecting production, human rights violations creating sourcing or market-access risks, or regulatory non-compliance resulting in additional costs and operational disruption. They should therefore be considered within the wider supply chain risk landscape.
2. Why is supply chain visibility important for managing risk?
Visibility enables companies to identify suppliers, dependencies, and potential vulnerabilities across their networks. When visibility ends at Tier 1, risks further upstream may remain undetected until they cause a problem or disruption.
3. What is multi-tier supply chain visibility?
Multi-tier supply chain visibility means gaining insight beyond direct Tier 1 suppliers into Tier 2 suppliers and deeper levels of the upstream supply chain where many sustainability risks tend to arise. It can help companies identify critical dependencies and risks that would otherwise remain hidden.
4. How can companies move beyond compliance in supply chain risk management?
Companies can connect sustainability and compliance processes with broader risk management by centralizing relevant data, continuously monitoring risks, strengthening cross-functional collaboration, engaging suppliers, and using risk insights in sourcing and strategic decision-making.
5. How can companies improve supply chain resilience?
Companies can strengthen supply chain resilience by combining reliable supplier data, continuous risk monitoring, multi-tier visibility, supplier engagement, scenario planning, cross-functional collaboration, and flexible sourcing strategies.
6. How can AI support supply chain risk management?
AI can support activities such as data processing and validation, continuous monitoring, pattern identification, supplier prioritization, and forward-looking risk analysis. Its role is to help companies process complex information more efficiently and support faster, better-informed decisions.
7. Does sustainability create measurable business value?
The 2026 European study indicates that most surveyed companies see positive impacts from their supply chain sustainability initiatives. However, systematic measurement is still relatively uncommon. The full report explores how measurement, risk-management maturity, resilience, and reported business value are connected.