Method of pre-treating metallic substrates

A method of pre-treating a metallic substrate, the method comprising

• i. one or more pre-treating steps selected from the groups consisting of cleaning steps, wherein at least part of the surface of the metallic substrate is contacted with one or more aqueous cleaning compositions, to obtain a cleaned metallic substrate;
• and/or
• ii. one or more chemical pre-treatment steps selected from the group consisting of conversion treating steps, passivation treating steps and thin-layer forming steps, wherein at least part of the surface of a metallic substrate is contacted with one or more chemical pre-treatment compositions selected from the group consisting of conversion treatment compositions, passivation treatment compositions and thin-layer forming compositions to obtain a chemically pre-treated substrate;
• wherein i. and/or ii. are followed by one or more rinsing steps, characterized in that at least one rinsing composition is used, which comprises an amount of water in the range from 97 wt.-% to 99.99 wt.-% and an amount of 0.8 to 200 mmol/L of the composition of one or more compounds of formula (I)
• the COOH group of which can be fully or partially neutralized and wherein one or more of residues R1, R2, R3, R4 and R5 are independently selected from each other from the group consisting of H, hydroxy groups and alkyl groups.