📝La charge du devoir de vigilance sur les entreprises s'inscrivant dans les chaines de valeur ((The burden of Vigilance Duty on companies in value chains), in 🕴️M.-A. Frison-Roche (dir.), 📕L'obligation de Compliance

► Full Reference: A. Nicollet, "La charge du devoir de vigilance sur les entreprises s'inscrivant dans les chaines de valeur(The burden of Vigilance Duty on companies in value chains​)", in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), L'Obligation de Compliance, Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Dalloz, coll. "Régulations & Compliance", 2025, to be published.

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📕read a general presentation of the book, L'Obligation de Compliance, in which this article is published 

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► English summary of this contribution : This article identifies the factors that lead to companies being held liable under the Vigilance Duty for which they are responsible. The first element is the notion of "chain", a new concept for the Law that has been incorporated into the legal system (I). This may be explicit or implicit, referring to the value chain, the activity chain or the supply chain. These vocabulary variations, depending on the texts and national laws, are aimed at cases where there is no overlap, but the duty of vigilance is transparently aimed at the value chain of which the others are part. The concept of the "chain" could therefore play an increasingly important role in Economic Law, in that it is its very existence that gives rise to a duty of vigilance on the part of the company that governs the structure of the chain.

The second part of the article shows that this Vigilance Duty places a shared burden on the companies in the chain. Indeed, while the company that is the master, either through corporate techniques or because it governs the structure of the chain more factually, must always fulfill this obligation, the companies along the chain cannot be relieved of it. The burden is cumulative, as stated in German legal system, but this principle should be generalised: performance may be joint, articulated, and performance by one may presume performance by the other, the obligation of the other may be performed by the other, but this does not amount to exemption. This concept allows for a global group policy without destroying the effectiveness of the Compliance Obligation.

Indeed, and this is the third part of the article, Liability is cumulative. The master company's liability is personal and it must not be able to shirk it. The companies in the value chain, while benefiting from a presumption of conformity by the very fact of the chain phenomenon and the multiple contracts and corporate shareholdings that structure it, are also liable if they fail in their Duty of Vigilance. National legislation varies widely in terms of the extent of liability incurred, with some not addressing the issue at all while others go into great detail, but they are not intended to call this principle into question.

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