Independent Assurance Report on the Degussa Corporate Citizenship Reporting 2006

To the Corporate Center Environment, Safety, Health, Quality of Degussa GmbH, Dusseldorf.

We have performed evidence-gathering procedures to provide assurance on the following aspects of Corporate Citizenship reporting of Degussa GmbH, Dusseldorf and its consolidated subsidiaries (the Group), all for the year ended December 31, 2006 (hereafter jointly referred to as the subject matter):

• The management and reporting processes with respect to the Corporate Citizenship Reporting 2006 and to the preparation of Environmental, Safety and Health (ESH) data; and
• The ESH data “Ecological Data” on pages 48 to 59 of the Corporate Citizenship Statistics Report 2006.

We have evaluated the subject matter against thefollowing criteria:

• The internal Corporate Citizenship Reporting guidelines;
• The procedures by which the ESH data are prepared, collated and aggregated internally; and
• The principles summarized in the section “Ecological Data - General Principles” on page 48 of the Corporate Citizenship Statistics Report which define the scope of the reporting, the inherent limitations of accuracy and completeness for the ESH data.

The Managing Board of Degussa GmbH, Dusseldorf is responsible for both the subject matter and the evaluation criteria.

Our responsibility is to provide a conclusion on the subject matter based on our evidence-gathering procedures in accordance with the International Standard on Assurance Engagements (ISAE) 3000 “Assurance Engagements other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Information”, approved December 2003 by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB).

We planned and performed our evidence-gathering procedures to obtain a basis for our conclusions in accordance with an ISAE 3000 assurance engagement. We have not performed an audit according to International Standards on Auditing. Accordingly, we do not express such an audit opinion.

Our evidence-gathering procedures included thefollowing work:

• Assess how Degussa staff apply the internal Corporate Citizenship Reporting guidelines at the site level;
• Visiting selected sites in Germany, France, Austria, Japan, China and the US;
• Interviewing the responsible staff for ESH data collection and Corporate Citizenship Reporting at the sites we visited as well as on corporate level;
• Performing tests on a sample basis of evidence supporting selected ESH parameters (occupational safety, emissions of volatile organic compounds, costs environmental protection, energy consumption and related CO₂ emissions, water consumption and hazardous waste) with regard to the reported data aggregation from the selected sites to Group level;
• Reading and performing tests at sites as well as group level of the relevant documentation on a sample basis, including corporate policies, management and reporting structures, documentation and systems used to collect, analyzeand aggregate reported ESH data; and
• Assess the data consolidation process of ESH data at corporate level.

In our opinion:

• The Degussa internal Corporate Citizenship Reporting guidelines are applied properly at the selected sites;
• The internal reporting system to collect and aggregate the ESH data is functioning as designed; and
• The reporting system provides an appropriate basis for the disclosure of ESH data, in all material respects, based on the evaluation criteria.

Based on our work described and the criteria detailed in this Assurance Report, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that management assertions on the subject matter defined above are materially misstated, in all material respects.

PricewaterhouseCoopers AG

Thomas Scheiwiller
PhD, Partner

Jürg Hutter
MSc and MBA

Zurich, March 28, 2007

The Independent Assurance Report on the Degussa Corporate Citizenship Reporting 2006 is available here for Download (PDF, 345 KB).