Limited Assurance Report of the Independent Auditor regarding the Non-Financial Group Statement*

To the Vonovia SE, Bochum

We have performed an independent limited assurance engagement on the non-financial group statement of Vonovia SE, Bochum (further the “Company”), as well as the section of the combined management report that are qualified as part of it through cross reference, "Fundamental Information About the Group", for the period from January 1 to December 31, 2022.

It was not part of our engagement to review references to external websites and information sources presented as “Further Information” in the non-financial group statement.

Management’s Responsibility

The legal representatives of the Company are responsible for the preparation of the non-financial group statement in accordance with § 315c in conjunction with §§ 289c to 289e HGB and with Article 8 of REGULATION (EU) 2020/852 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of June 18, 2020 on the establishment of a framework to facilitate sustainable investment, and amending Regulation (EU) 2019/2088 (further “EU Taxonomy Regulation”) and the supplementing Delegated Acts as well as the interpretation of the wordings and terms contained in the EU Taxonomy Regulation and in the supplementing Delegated Acts by the Company as disclosed in Section “EU Taxonomy” of the non-financial group statement.

This responsibility of the legal representatives includes the selection and application of appropriate methods to prepare the non-financial group statement and the use of assumptions and estimates for individual disclosures which are reasonable under the given circumstances. Furthermore, the legal representatives are responsible for such internal control as they consider necessary to enable the preparation of a non-financial group statement that is free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

The EU Taxonomy Regulation and the supplementing Delegated Acts contain wordings and terms that are still subject to substantial uncertainties regarding their interpretation and for which not all clarifications have been published yet. Therefore, the legal representatives have included a description of their interpretation in Section “EU Taxonomy” of the non-financial group statement. They are responsible for its tenability. Due to the innate risk of diverging interpretations of vague legal concepts, the legal conformity of these interpretations is subject to uncertainty.

Independence and Quality Assurance on the Part of the Auditing Firm

In performing this engagement, we applied the legal provisions and professional pronouncements regarding independence and quality assurance, in particular the Professional Code for German Public Auditors and Chartered Accountants (in Germany) and the quality assurance standard of the German Institute of Public Auditors (Institut der Wirtschaftsprüfer, IDW) regarding quality assurance requirements in audit practice (IDW QS 1).

Practitioner’s Responsibility

It is our responsibility to express a conclusion on the non-financial group statement based on our work performed within a limited assurance engagement.

We conducted our work in the form of a limited assurance engagement in accordance with the International Standard on Assurance Engagements (ISAE) 3000 (Revised): “Assurance Engagements other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information”, published by IAASB.

Accordingly, we have to plan and perform the assurance engagement in such a way that we obtain limited assurance as to whether any matters have come to our attention that cause us to believe that the non-financial group statement of the Company for the period from January 1 to December 31, 2022 has not been prepared, in all material respects, in accordance with § 315c in conjunction with §§ 289c to 289e HGB and with the EU Taxonomy Regulation and the supplementing Delegated Acts as well as the interpretation of the wordings and terms contained in the EU Taxonomy Regulation and in the supplementing Delegated Acts by the legal representatives as disclosed in Section “EU Taxonomy” of the non-financial group statement. As the assurance procedures performed in a limited assurance engagement are less comprehensive than in a reasonable assurance engagement, the level of assurance obtained is substantially lower. The choice of assurance procedures is subject to the auditor’s own judgement.

Within the scope of our assurance engagement we performed, amongst others, the following procedures:

• Inquiries of group-level personnel who are responsible for the materiality analysis in order to understand the processes for determining material topics and respective reporting boundaries for Vonovia SE
• A risk analysis, including media research, to identify relevant information on Vonovia SE’s sustainability performance in the reporting period
• Evaluation of the design and the implementation of systems and processes for the collection, processing and monitoring of disclosures, including data consolidation, on environmental, employee and social matters, respect for human rights, and combating corruption and bribery
• Inquiries of group-level personnel who are responsible for determining disclosures on concepts, due diligence processes, results and risks, performing internal control functions and consolidating disclosures
• Inspection of selected internal and external documents
• Analytical procedures for the evaluation of data and of the trends of quantitative disclosures as reported at group level by all sites
• Evaluation of local data collection, validation and reporting processes as well as the reliability of reported data
• Assessment of the overall presentation of the disclosures
• Inquiries of responsible employees at Group level to obtain an understanding of the approach to identify relevant economic activities in accordance with EU taxonomy
• Evaluation of the design and the implementation of systems and processes for the collection, processing and monitoring of disclosures on turnover, capital expenditures and operating expenditures for the taxonomy-relevant economic activities for the environmental objectives of climate change mitigation and adaptation
• Assessment of data collection, validation and reporting processes and reliability of reported data for the taxonomy-aligned economic activities in relation to the assurance on the Technical Screening Criteria (substantial contribution for the environmental objective, DNSH criteria) and minimum safeguards

The legal representatives have to interpret vague legal concepts in order to be able to compile the relevant disclosures according to Article 8 of the EU Taxonomy Regulation. Due to the innate risk of diverging interpretations of vague legal concepts, the legal conformity of these interpretations and, correspondingly, our assurance thereof are subject to uncertainty.

In our opinion, we obtained sufficient and appropriate evidence for reaching a conclusion for the assurance engagement.

Emphasis of Matter

We refer to the section "EU Taxonomy Regulation" and section "Combating Corruption and Bribery", in which the legal representatives describe that Vonovia SE was notified on March 7, 2023 by the investigating authorities on the basis of a search warrant issued by the Local Court of Bochum of investigations against current and former employees. The subject matter of the proceedings is the suspicion of gang and commercial fraud, breach of trust, anticompetitive agreements in connection with tenders and particularly serious cases of passive and active corruption in business transactions, in each case also to the detriment of the Vonovia Group or selected affiliated companies. The findings from these investigative proceedings to date were taken into account for the calculation of the taxonomy-aligned key figures. In doing so, the performance indicators of economic activities 7.3 and 7.7 were slightly reduced by the estimated share of turnover or capital expenditure and operating expenses in connection with increased services for the Technical Building Services business area which are the subject of the investigation proceedings.

Our opinion is not modified in respect of this matter.

Assurance Opinion

Based on the procedures performed and the evidence obtained, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that the non-financial group statement of Vonovia SE for the period from January 1 to December 31, 2022 has not been prepared, in all material respects, in accordance with § 315c in conjunction with §§ 289c to 289e HGB and with the EU Taxonomy Regulation and the supplementing Delegated Acts as well as the interpretation disclosed in Section “EU Taxonomy” of the non-financial group statement.

Restriction of Use/General Engagement Terms

This assurance report is solely addressed to Vonovia SE, Bochum.

Our assignment for the Vonovia SE, Bochum, and professional liability as described above was governed by the General Engagement Terms for Wirtschaftsprüfer and Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaften (Allgemeine Auftragsbedingungen für Wirtschaftsprüfer und Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaften) in the version dated January 1, 2017 (https://www.kpmg.de/bescheinigungen/lib/aab_english.pdf). By reading and using the information contained in this assurance report, each recipient confirms having taken note of provisions of the General Engagement Terms (including the limitation of our liability for negligence to EUR 4 million as stipulated in No. 9) and accepts the validity of the attached General Engagement Terms with respect to us.

Düsseldorf, March 16, 2023

KPMG AG
Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft
[Original German version signed by:]