5 September 2022 · Working papers

🚧Compliance contract, compliance clauses

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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, Compliance contract, compliance clauses, working paper, September 2022.

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►Summary of this working paper: Compliance Law has multiplied obligations. However, although Tort Law is emerging in Compliance issues and contracts are multiplying in practice, for the moment the relationship between Compliance Law and Contract Law is not very visible (I).

However, there are contracts whose sole purpose is to give concrete form to Compliance, which creates a specific contract and must influence its implementation (II). Moreover, there is much to learn from the diversity of compliance stipulations scattered throughout a wide range of contracts (III).

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🔓read the developments below⤵️

1 Introduction ♦ Compliance Law has increased the number of obligations. However, although Tort Law is emerging and contracts are multiplying in practice, the relationship between compliance Law and Contract Law is not yet very visible (I). However, there are contracts whose sole purpose is to give concrete form to Compliance, which makes it a specific contract, influencing its implementation (II). Furthermore, there is much to learn from the diversity of compliance stipulations scattered throughout a wide range of contracts (III).

I. THE CHALLENGE: IN COMPLIANCE OBLIGATIONS, FREEING UP CONTRACT LAW

2. "Regulations", the "primary" seat of compliance, as conformity ♦ When one reads the academic doctrine or grey literature about "compliance", it is above all "regulations" that is discussed📎¹. The expression frequently used is "regulatory compliance"📎². All presentations follow from it, for example to describe how the French so-called "Sapin 2" law of 2016 would have translated-pasted the US FCPA📎³ ; all discussions and ambitions fit into it, e.g. how to shape "blocking laws" to escape this grip of US regulation📎⁴ by enacting European regulations. Contracts have only a passive place there📎⁵ place, since they are subject to one or other of the regulatory power's holds📎⁶ , many emphasising that the legislative power, itself the object of a thousand lobbies, is in reality an economic and political power📎⁷. Lawyers and judges would have little place in this relationship of consenting obedience between the rule and the company📎⁸.

3. The natural prism of the "regulatory obligation", resulting from the reduction of Compliance to conformity ♦ It is certain that if we define Compliance Law as the obligation for a company to "comply with the regulations applicable to it", a definition that is certainly commonly encountered, it is normal for the lawyer to study "regulatory obligations" first and foremost, since "compliance law" would therefore only consist of carrying out what the regulations require📎⁹. The focus is even more on regulatory obligations when the legislator matches its desire to be obeyed with a criminal sanction📎¹⁰. The association between sanctions and compliance is often made as if in a twin relationship. This is even more reason to reduce it.

4. Compliance as a tool of obedience, monumental goals as a space of wills ♦ But if we define in a more substantial way the Law of Compliance, which then gathers rules, institutions, decisions and methods towards specific goals, this branch of Law then receiving a teleological definition (like the whole of Economic Law), to take its full meaning in the "Monumental Goals" it pursues📎¹¹, everything changes. Indeed, all these rules, so scattered and heavy with regulations and constantly changing soft law, have a great stability and unity. They give concrete expression, in Ex Ante terms, to the desire to detect and prevent systemic risks in order to ensure that in the future a disaster will not occur (collapse of the banking📎¹², financial📎¹³, digital📎¹⁴, environmental📎¹⁵, etc.) so that human beings will not be crushed by it. This humanistic goal, served by these "negative monumental goals", appear even more when it comes to "positive monumental goals"📎¹⁶, the various legal techniques aiming to build a future that will be a better system for human beings than the one of today, with, for example, effective equality between human beings, principles of stability, respect for others or probity effective in a liberal economic system that is nevertheless maintained¹⁷📎¹⁸. One may scoff at so much utopia📎¹⁸ but this is what Europe is setting up📎¹⁹. It is no longer a question of obtaining obedience and mechanical consents. It is a question of making a project, which has been wanted, and transform it into a reality. Now, companies and individuals can actively contribute to this, through what is their natural instrument for building a project for the future: the contract. Contract Law is therefore penetrating because "conformity" is only a tool in Compliance Law, which is based above all on will and not on obedience📎²⁰.

5. The presence of Contract Law in Compliance Law through the responsibility of companies arising from their commitments ♦ The movement that is now perceptible is the obligation of legal persons through the commitments they have made, apart from the obedience that everyone owes to the legal requirements, with judges obliging companies to do what they have committed to, regardless of the form that this commitment has taken. Particularly clear-cut cases in environmental and climate matters have led courts to impose on companies not new obligations or to perform regulatory obligations but, taking act of commitments they had made📎²¹. This responsibility is based on an obligation born of the will of the company itself which, in the liberal system in which we live, is not obliged to commit itself, but must on the one hand inform of the commitments it makes (extra-financial information📎²²) and on the other hand keep its commitments, failing which it will be held responsible. Its "liability commitment" acted by the judges is then to be taken literally, since the courts condemn the company to do what it had said it would do, and not to pay for doing nothing. This "Ex Ante Liability" is a pillar of Compliance Law📎²³, which relies on the company's will.

6. Contract law seems to have yet to be discovered ♦ But as everyone knows, even if liability tends to make the distinction between the contractual and the extra-contractual very porous, the legal notion of obligation will only take its full place in Compliance Law through the mechanism of the contract. In practice, there is a multitude of contracts. For a long time now, companies have been building up a stock of stipulations according to their type of activity, their type of co-contractor, the type of risk, following the method of risk mapping📎²⁴, this another tool of Compliance Law. This activity is currently relatively unknown and little studied. Yet it has a bright future. Even more reason to study it. This is just a matter of mentioning a few basic ideas.

II. THE COMPLIANCE CONTRACT HYPOTHESIS

7. Entrusting a third party with the task of ensuring its "conformity" with a regulatory corpus: the "conformity contract" ♦ It is very common for a company, believing that its forces must be focused on its business, since complying with regulations is not one of them, to contract with service providers to ensure that it is in conformity with a regulatory body, for instance the European GDPR or the applicable texts on whistleblowing mechanism. Through this service contract, this company, often relying on its technological skills rather than its legal skills, will set up platforms and algorithms📎²⁵, to ensure that its client co-contractor is "compliant" with an identified regulation. Compliance by design, which claims to integrate automatic compliance with regulations into the algorithmic infrastructure of companies, meets this demand for services.

8. Entrusting a third party with the task of contributing to the Monumental Goals for which the company is responsible: the "Compliance contract" ♦ In most cases, the company is aware that the legal system requires more than conformity, since companies must act effectively to achieve Monumental Goals²⁶, for example about climate change or the empowerment of women, and requires less, since it is no question to obtain the effectiveness of "all the regulations applicable to the company", but only those that are relevant to these goals. To this aim, the company concludes service contracts, for example with service providers, in particular "trusted third parties", specialists who will multiply in the systems that are being set up📎²⁷.

9. "Compliance" and "conformity", an essential service justifying the qualification of a "Compliance contract", a specific contract ♦ This can be considered as a specific contract. Indeed, in the examples given, the very purpose of the contract is the fulfilment by the company of its compliance obligation thanks to the service of a third party thus contractually obtained: compliance is the very purpose of the contract. In most cases, the parties call it expressly. If they do not do so, the judge can and should do so through his power of qualification.

10. The influence of the general definition of Compliance on the interpretation of the Compliance contract ♦ This qualification implies that the contract must be interpreted not only with regard to the will of the parties but also regarding Compliance Law, i.e. the laws whose observance is ensured or/and the monumental goals that are to be achieved by the contract.

11. The influence of the general definition of Compliance on the regime of the Compliance contract ♦ Compliance Law will influence the regime of this specific contract. Thus, the contract may transform an obligation of means into an obligation of result, if such a stipulation is not abusive for the debtor, but not the opposite if the legal obligation is of result, such as the obligation to map, for example.

12. The impossibility of transferring the 'personal liability' of the company to another legal person ♦ Moreover, as the contract is an instrument for someone for the performance by another one of its obligations, if these are of legal origin, this contract cannot transfer to this other one what the Conseil constitutionnel, French Constitutional Council, rightly designated, in relation to the duty of vigilance, which is the subject of so many clauses📎²⁸, as a "personal responsibility" of the company📎²⁹, which will itself be responsible for the good or bad performance by its co-contractor. Compliance Law cannot be totally delegated.

13. The evidential benefit of the compliance contract ♦ But in Compliance Law, the major issue for companies is evidentiary: companies need to document how they are fulfilling their compliance obligations, regardless of where they will stand in potential future litigation📎³⁰. Contracts can have the beneficial effect of providing pools of evidence to demonstrate the "best efforts" done by the company.

III. THE MULTITUDE OF COMPLIANCE STIPULATIONS AND OPEN QUESTIONS

14. Compliance stipulations inserted in contracts having another purpose ♦ More commonly, in many contracts, a stipulation indicates the obligation to comply with a regulation or refers to a "policy of respecting personal data" or to a "commitment to duty of vigilance", which will generate obligations. For example, an obligation for one to allow the other to enter his company to carry out "compliance audits"📎³¹. These clauses often operate by simple reference (to websites). The contractual obligations are heavily sanctioned, e.g. by termination, or the application of a penalty clause.

15. Conformity or Compliance stipulations to be assessed according to their purpose and effect ♦ In a teleological branch of Law as Compliance Law is, these clauses will have to be assessed according to their purpose and effect, under the dual consideration of both the purpose of the contract in which they are inserted, for example a distribution contract, and Compliance Law which theses stipulations embody. The possible inequality between the parties will have to be taken into consideration📎³².

16. Whoever is compelled to do less can compel himself to do more, not the other way round ♦ Compliance Law being usually of public order, parties may undertake to do more than the legal system requires of them, for example for the data protection, but a stipulation cannot allow them to evade the legal obligation to comply. In practice, the art of drafting clauses will be confronted with the art of judges to discern in these stipulations what adds to and what subtracts from Compliance Law. This supervision will be carried out upstream by the incentives that the legislator develops to produce contractual behaviour producing effects that coincide with the political general will³³ , Law of Compliance thus moving from effectiveness to efficiency³⁴.

17. Structural clauses for obtaining extraterritorial regulation outside regulated sectors ♦ Moreover, these clauses, of transmission of information📎³⁵, of audit, of secrecy³⁶, of warning, etc., have a structuring nature, even more valuable as they operate in spaces which, notably because of their international and/or immaterial nature, are not in the legal sense of "sectors"³⁷. To take up this distinction, which is so fruitful between the contract-exchange and the contract-organisation³⁸ , these clauses do not operate an exchange but build a structure³⁹ , in particular in value chains, as the contractualised duty of care o vigilance will show. Flaw-down clauses are an example of this⁴⁰. Effectiveness clauses, supporting these clauses which are themselves tools of Compliance Law, can provide for dispute settlement methods, such as mediation⁴¹, conciliation or arbitration⁴², the reconciliation between Compliance Law and International Arbitration, the natural space for global conflicts, particularly climatic ones⁴³, being in progress. Judges are beginning to have to assess the scope of stipulations that target compliance "policies"⁴⁴.

18 ♦ The relationship between Compliance and Contracts is just beginning.

S. for instance 🕴️X. Boucobza et 🕴️Y.-M. Serinet, 📝Loi "Sapin 2" et devoir de vigilance : l'entreprise face aux nouveaux défis de la compliance, 2017.
🕴️C., Collard, 📝Conformité réglementaire et performance de l'entreprise : la vision des acteurs (regards croisés de directeurs juridiques et de compliance officers), 2009.
The extraterritorial effect of the FCPA having given rise to numerous studies, see for instance 🕴️E. Breen, 📗FCPA. La France face au droit américain de la lutte anti-corruption, 2017. More broadly, 🕴️K. von Busekit (dir.), 📗International Compliance. Legal Requirements of Business Organisation in over 30 countries, 2016.
Par ex. 🕴️M. Audit, 📝Les lois extraterritoriales américaines comme facteur d'accélération de la compliance, in 🕴️N. Borga,🕴️J.-Cl. Marin, and 🕴️J.-Ch. Roda, 📕Compliance : l'entreprise, le régulateur et le juge, 2018.
Like the company itself, which can only set up "processes" to comply with the regulations, without really knowing if this way of doing things can or must be considered as "procedures" in the legal sense of the term, with all the consequences of constraint and protection resulting from it. S. 🕴️Ch. Lapp, 📝How a Company works to make Compliance Law a reality; the statues of processes, in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📘Compliance Jurisdictionalisation, 2023.
S. for instance and more broadly, 🕴️L. d'Avout, 📗L'entreprise et les conflits internationaux de lois, 2019, the author devotes a few pages to compliance regulations.
There is a great deal of doctrine on this subject, generally more sociological and political than legal. S. 🕴️A. Garapon and 🕴️P. Servan-Schreiber (dir.), 📗Deals de justice. Le marché américain de l'obéissance mondialisée, 2013.
🕴️J.-M. Darrois, 📝La loi Sapin 2 : un défi pour les avocats, in M.-A. Frison-Roche (dir.), 📕Régulation, Supervision, Compliance, 2017 ;🕴️A. de La Cotardière, 📝Le rôle de l'avocat en matière de compliance, ibidem ;🕴️Th. Amico, 📝Compliance or the passage from ex post to ex ante: a Compernican revolution for the criminal lawyer?, in🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📘Compliance Tools, 2021 ; 🕴️W. Feugère (dir.), 📗Compliance : nouveau paradigme pour l'avocat, 2020 ;

More generally and in the opposite way, because the judge and the lawyer are at the center of Compliance Law, since compliance is only one element of it, 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📘Compliance Jurisdictionalisation, 2023.
For instance, 🕴️J.-P. Valuet, 📝Conformité à la loi, conformité aux codes. Les mérites de la prévention, JCP Entreprises et Affaires, n°30, 2012 ; M.-E. Boursier,📝 Droit pénal des affaires internationales et compliance : compétences territoriales et extraterritorialité, in 🕴️N. Borga, 🕴️J.-Cl. Marin, & 🕴️J.-Ch. Roda, 📕Compliance : l'entreprise, le régulateur et le juge, 2018.
The presentation of Compliance Law has therefore quite naturally begun with Criminal Law, even though it's an Ex Post mechanism and even though the logic of Compliance is in essential points contrary to the logic of Criminal Law. S. for instance 🕴️J.-Cl. Marin, 📝Droit pénal et compliance, in M.-A. Frison-Roche (dir.), 📕Régulation, Supervision, Compliance, 2017 ; 🕴️S. Manacorda, 📝La dynamique des programmes de conformité des entreprises : déclin ou transfiguration du droit pénal des affaires ?, in 🕴️A. Supiot (dir.), 📗L'entreprise dans un monde sans frontières. Perspectives économiques et juridiques, 2015 ; 🕴️G. Beaussonie, 📝Do Criminal Law and Compliance form a system?, in 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📕Les Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance, 2022 ; 🕴️A. Bruneau, 📝The way in which compagnies in the banking sector organize themselves and behave in order to fulfill their role as "prosecutor and judges of themselves, in 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📘Compliance Monumental Goals, 2023.

On this paradox, 🕴️W. S. Laufer, 📝Corporate Liability, Risk Shifting and the Paradox of Compliance, 1999.

It has to be said that the scale of the sanctions and the fact that they hit crucial European companies has focused the first attention on the crackdown. S. for example🕴️R. Bismuth, 📝Quelques réflexions autour des procédures de sanctions visant Alstom et BNP Paribas, 2015 ; 🕴️J. Morel-Maroger, 📝La compliance financière, les enseignements de l'affaire BNP Paribas, in 🕴️N. Borga, 🕴️J.-Cl. Marin, and 🕴️J.-Ch. Roda (ed.), 📕Compliance : l'entreprise, le régulateur et le juge, 2018.

The same phenomenon can be found today in Environmental and Climate Law. For instance, in the Michelin case (🕴️B. Parance, 📝Une illustration de la démarche de compliance en droit de l'environnement : le cas Michelin devant le Point de contact nationale France, in 🕴️N. Borga, 🕴️J.-Cl. Marin, and 🕴️J.-Ch. Roda, 📕Compliance : l'entreprise, le régulateur et le juge, 2018), or in the case Total-Ouganda (🕴️O. Dufour, 📝Total en Ouganda : le tribunal de Paris fait appel à des amici curiae sur le devoir de vigilance, 2022).

On the strangeness it produces, 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Le Droit de la Compliance, 2016.

This novelty comes both from the tools, for instance the whistleblowing (🕴️N. Lenoir, Les lanceurs d'alerte, une idée neuve en Europe, in 🕴️N. Borga, 🕴️J.-Cl. Marin, et 🕴️J.-Ch. Roda, 📕Compliance : l'entreprise, le régulateur et le juge, 2018 ; 🕴️J. Chacornac (dir.), 📗Lanceurs d'alerte : regards comparatistes, 2020 ; s. more generally 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (dir.), 📘Compliance Tools, 2021) and from the new conception of Law that the aim to reach Monumental Goals, which express a will to change the future, implies (🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📘Compliance Monumental Goals, 2023).
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (dir.), 📘Compliance Monumental Goals, 2023.
🕴️X. Musca, 📝Construire une Europe de la Compliance en donnant une meilleure place aux entreprises, in 🕴️M.A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📕Pour une Europe de la Compliance, 2019 ;🕴️A. Le Goff, 📝La part des banques dans la concrétisation des Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance, in 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📕Les buts monumentaux de la Compliance, 2022 ; 🕴️A. Bruneau, 📝The way in wich companies in the banking sector organize themselves and behave in order to fulfill their role as "prosecutor and judges of themselves", in M.-A. Frison-Roche (dir.), 📘Compliance Jurisdictionalisation, 2023.

This emergence of Compliance Law in the banking sector, a sector that is by nature risky, a sector that is by nature constructed and maintained by the operators themselves, operators that are by nature systemic and crucial, justifies the fact that the banking sector, which is backed by the Politic and is intimate of the monetary, serves as a technical model for all sectoral Compliance Laws. M.-A. Frison-Roche, Compliance : avant, maintenant, après, in 🕴️N. Borga, 🕴️J.-Cl. Marin, et 🕴️J.-Ch. Roda, 📕Compliance : l'entreprise, le régulateur et le juge, 2018.
🕴️O. Boulon, 📝Compliance et régulation financière : le rôle de l'Autorité des marchés financiers , in 🕴️N. Borga, 🕴️J.-Cl. Marin, et 🕴️J.-Ch. Roda (ed.), 📕Compliance : l'entreprise, le régulateur et le juge, 2018.
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📓L'apport du Droit de la Compliance à la Gouvernance d'Internet, 2019 ; 🕴️R.-O. Maistre, 📝What monumental goals for the Regulator in a rapidly changing audiovisual and digital landscape?, in 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📘Compliance Monumental Goals, 2023.
🕴️M.A. Frison-Roche, 🚧Compliance Law and Climate. To prevent Climate Risl and build Climate Balance, 2022.
On the "positive" and "negative" monumental goals, 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Compliance Monumental Goals, beating heart of Compliance Law, in 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📘Compliance Monumental Goals, 2023.
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Building by Law the Unicity of Compliance Tools from the Definition of Compliance Law by its "Monumental Goals", in🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (dir.), 📘Compliance Tools, 2021.
Recurrent question, v. 🕴️V. Martineau-Bourgnineaud, 📝La légalisation de la responsabilité sociale des entreprises (RSE) au service du dialogue social : idéologie ou utopie ?, 2016 ; 🕴️J.-Ch. Roda, Compliance by design; between innovation and illusion, in🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📘Compliance Tools, 2021.
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (dir.), 📕Pour une Europe de la Compliance, 2019.
This is an essential issue. Where compliance demands obedience, it arouses criticism because it subjects human beings to a collective project or hierarchy against which their individuality is not protected. As such, the conformity system, which obliges to show its submission to all regulations in advance and to everyone, through 'consent', is - rightly - criticised. For example by 🕴️Alain Supiot (📝Du nouveau au self-service normatif : la responsabilité sociale des entreprises, 2004). In the same critical sense, 🕴️G. Teubner, 📗Fragments constitutionnels. Le constitutionnalisme sociétal à l'ère de la globalisation, 2016.

On the distinction that should be made between 'consent', which is submission, and will, which is on the contrary the expression of freedom, see on the very principle of this distinction, 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Remarques sur la distinction entre la volonté et le consentement en droit des contrats, 1995; on the importance of this distinction in the digital space, 📝Oui au principe de la volonté, manifestation de la liberté, non aux consentements mécaniques, 2018; on the deepening of this at the crossroads of the Compliance Law and the Contract Law, 🎤L'obligation de compliance, entre volonté et consentement : obligation sur obligation vaut, 2023.
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 🚧Compliance Law and Climate. To prevent Climate Risk and build Climate Balance, in 🕴️M. Torre-Schaub, 🕴️B. Lormeteau et 🕴️A. Stevignon (dir.), Les risques climatiques à l'épreuve du droit. Comment le droit fait-il face aux nouveaux risques engendrés par la crise climatique ?, 2023.
🕴️S. Schiller, 📝La compliance extra-financière, les risques de contradictions de domaines d'application, in 🕴️N. Borga, 🕴️J.-Cl. Marin, & 🕴️J.-Ch. Roda, 📕Compliance : l'entreprise, le régulateur et le juge, 2018.
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝La responsabilité Ex Ante, pilier du Droit de la Compliance, 2022.
On the risk mapping, 🕴️S. Dyens, 📝La cartographie des risques, outil central de la compliance publique, 2018 ;🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche , 📝Théorie juridique de la cartographie des risques, centre du Droit de la Compliance, 2019 ;🕴️N. Guillaume, 📝Risk mapping: first insights of challenges, limits and good practices, in 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (dir.), 📘Compliance Tools, 2021.

On the control of third-parties, especially by the mean of contractual mechanisms, in regard of value chains concerned by the duty of vigilance : 🕴️M.A. Frison-Roche, 🚧What is common to Compliance, Contract and Contracting persons, 2022.
🕴️O. Seidowsky, 📝Audits logiciels et conformité digitale, in 📗Mélanges pour Jérome Huet, 2017.
In the same way,🕴️M. Galland, 📝The Regulator's Inspection of the Effectiveness of the Compliance Tools Implemeted by the Company, in 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📘Compliance Tools, 2021.
What🕴️Antoine Gaudemet rightly calls "un nouveau monde" (what we can translate as "a new world") : A. Gaudemet (dir.), 📗La compliance, un nouveau monde ? Aspects d'une mutation du Droit, 2017.
These clauses allow the "ordering" company to have the execution of its obligation carried out by the companies in the same value chain, or to give itself the means to execute this legal duty, in particular through obligations of information, obligations to accept control, obligations to adhere to its own commitments, obligations of training, etc.
⚖️Conseil const. (French Constitutional Court), dec. n°2017-750 DC, March 23, 2017, Loi relative au devoir de vigilance des sociétés mères et des entreprises donneurs d'ordre.
For the prolegomena of the probationary system specific to the Compliance Law and the role that contracts play in it, 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝 The judge, the compliance obligation and the company. The Compliance probationary system, in 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📘Compliance Jurisdictionalisation, 2023.
On this notion, 🕴️S. Baller, 📝La gestion d'un audit de compliance ? Limites et perspectives, in 🕴️N. Borga, 🕴️J.-Cl. Marin, and 🕴️J.-Ch. Roda, 📕Compliance : l'entreprise, le régulateur et le juge, 2018. 🕴️A. Gutierrez-Crespin, 📝Audit of Compliance systems, in🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (dir.), 📘Compliance Tools, 2021.
It’s a major topic in Contract Law and the links between companies’ societal commitments and Compliance Law must not overshadow it. On the contrary, the depth of Contract Law in this area must rebalance what may be unbalanced in the CSR system. S. 🕴️M. Fabre-Magnan, 📝Les fausses promesses des entreprises : RSE et droit commun des contrats, 2019 ; 📝La responsabilité du fait du cocontractant. Une figure juridique pour la RSE, 2019.
🕴️M. Larouer, 📝The Manifestations of Incentives Mechanisms in French Compliance Law, in🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📘Compliance Tools, 2021.
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Incentives and Compliance, a promising couple to increase the Compliance Law utility, in🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📘Compliance Tools, 2021. This is particularly required for data, 🕴️H. Tardieu, 📝Data Sovereignty and Compliance, ibidem. On the evidential status of this gradation between "effectiveness, efficacy, efficiency", 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝The judge, the compliance obligation, and the company. The Compliance probationary system, in 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📘Compliance Jurisdictionalisation, 2023.
which are essentially in the implementation by companies of their legal duty of vigilance.

This can be done through contractual obligations to transmit information on an accessory basis (providing information to enable the creditor to fulfill his personal duty of vigilance) or on a principal basis when the legislation only imposes on companies an obligation to provide information and not an obligation to take action, which is the case for the American legislation, compared to the more ambitious European legislation.
The contractual construction of secrets is a considerable challenge, particularly in the face of legislations that impose the transformation of information. When the legislations belong to the same legal system, the courts can still, notably thanks to the principle of proportionality which then gives them an immense power, balance the two legislations. When the laws that require the transmission of information (where European compliance legislation requires its non-transmission) or that require the non-transmission of information (where European compliance legislation requires its transmission) belong to another legal system, it is more perilous. This increases judge’s power. For the first assumption, see for instance 🕴️A. Deroudille et 🕴️F. Fatah, 📝L'extraterritorialité du RGPD dans le contexte du "Cloud Act", 2019 ; for the second assumption, 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 💬 "la nouvelle loi chinoise de protection des données est un anti-RGPD", 2021.
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝From Regulation Law to Compliance Law, in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📕Régulation, Supervision, Compliance, 2017 ; 🕴️B. de Juvigny, 📝La compliance, bras armé de la régulation, ibidem ;🕴️ M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Le Droit de la Compliance au-delà du Droit de la Régulation, 2018.
🕴️P. Didier, 📝 Brève notes sur le contrat-organisation, in 📗Mélanges François Terré, L'avenir du droit, 1999.
That's how the architecture of the sovereign European cloud built by Gaia-X is legally based on Compliance Law.

🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 🎥Compliance Law, an adequate legal framework for Gaia-X, 2020 ; 📝Compliance, and resulting consequences on the labelling framework of Gaia-X, 2022 ; 🎥"The distinction between the part and the whole", contribution of the Chapter 2 of the third global Summit of Gaia-X, Chapter on Automated compliance: "the" solution or "a" solution?, 2022.
🕴️L. Tenreira, 📝La rédaction des clauses d'application du devoir de vigilance par les Global Lawyers : l'exemple des clauses de flow-down , 2022.
🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝 Compliance et Médiation, 2023.
🕴️J.-B. Racine, 📝Compliance and Arbitration: Problematisation, in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📘Compliance Jurisdictionalisation, 2023.
🕴️C. Kessedjan, 📝L'arbitrage au service de la lutte contre la violation des droits humains par les entreprises, in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📕La juridictionnalisation de la Compliance, 2023.
For example, the decision of the Commercial Chamber of Cour de cassation (French judicial supreme Court) of Nov. 20, 2019, regarding an anti-bribery policy, to which the co-contractor adhered, a corrupting fact on its part justifying the immediate termination of commercial relations in the distribution relationship. In his note, 🕴️Jean-Christophe Roda highlights the direct influence of Compliance Law in this solution.
🕴️M. Fabre-Magnan, 📝La responsabilité du fait du cocontractant. Une figure juridique pour la RSE, 2019.
🕴️B. Basterling et 🕴️J.-Ch. Duhamel, 📝Le Comply or Explain : la transparence conformiste en droit des sociétés, 2009.
🕴️C. Granier, 📝The Normative originality of Compliance by Design, in 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), 📘Compliance Tools, 2021 ; 🕴️L. Pailler, 📝Technological Tools, Compliance by Design and GDPR: the Protection of Personal Data from Design, ibidem.
🕴️S. Schiller, 📝La compliance extra-financière, les risques de contradictions de domaines d'application, in 🕴️N. Borga, 🕴️J.-Cl. Marin, & 🕴️J.-Ch. Roda (ed.), 📕Compliance : l'entreprise, le régulateur et le juge, 2018.

FieldsGlobal law, General Law and Civil Law, Economic Law, Regulation and Compliance

TagsResponsibilityContract LawWillVigilanceCompliance LawClauseConsentCommitment