European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)

Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) states that everyone has the right to an impartial tribunal.

Insofar as the regulator in France is most often an Independent Administration Authority (IAA) and this is assimilated to a court, the regulator is required to comply with the ECHR. This contributes to the jurisdictionalization of regulation.

Thus, when there is a sanction or dispute settlement procedure, a real trial is established, and companies, helped by their lawyers, must benefit from access to the file, from the adversarial principle, from rights defense, the right to participate in the debate at the hearing. These fundamental procedural guarantees also include the obligation for the regulator to justify its decisions, which facilitates the control exercised over it by the appeal courts, and to create by accumulation of decisions a sort of case law of the regulators themselves. .

Thus, human rights by procedure have entered the regulatory authorities. This refers to one of the issues that is emerging, namely the balance that must be established between the laws of the market and the non-economic prerogatives of individuals.