📝From Regulation Law to Compliance Law, in 📕Regulation, Supervision, Compliance

Complete reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., Du Droit de la régulation au Droit de la compliance, in Frison-Roche, M.-A. (dir.), Régulation, Supervision, Compliance, Série Régulations, Dalloz, 2017, p.1-14.

This article was published in the book Régulation, Supervision, Compliance, published in the Régulations.  Series. (Dalloz-Journal of Regulation and Compliance -JoRC)

It is based on a working paper, available in French and English.

Read the article.

Summary: It is a question of showing the movement which starts from Regulation Law, today constituted, to Compliance Law, today in the process of being born.

To explain this movement, making it possible to anticipate the near future, in what it should not be and in what it should be, it is necessary to restore how the Compliance Law was born from a Law of Regulation which has thus found the sources of a Law of public services whose roots it had first cut (I).

In fact, the Law of Regulation has happily renewed the Law but has also narrowed its perspective. Today, the phenomenon of globalization calls for a need for public authority 1 that States cannot be satisfied by traditional legal methods, even when it is necessary to set up a sort of "global public service". This then takes place through Compliance Law which revolutionizes all legal systems, both Common Law and Civil Law (II).

In fact, the Compliance Law internalizes in certain companies, the "crucial operators", the duty to make effective the "monumental goals" that the regulatory authorities have formulated and which these companies must make effective worldwide. In this respect, Compliance Law is an extension of Regulation Law, which is taking on a new dimension both in its aims and in its space. It is the whole of the Law which is transformed.

The near future will say whether it results in confrontations, between companies and regulators, between Europe and the United States, or on the contrary by a pact of confidence between crucial operators and Regulators. If this is achieved, the Compliance Law, expressing the political dimension of the Law of regulation, expressing the share of companies ceasing to be neutralized by the mechanics of the markets, will be an advance in Law. It is in this perspective that European Compliance Law must be constructed.