🚧Monumental Goals, normative anchoring of Compliance

Compliance Law is not only the requiring for the enterprise to obey the regulations, what is true for everybody. This is the difference between the « conformity » (to obey the legal rules and to show that obedience) and what Compliance Law is.

Conformity is the obligation we all have to respect the legal standards that apply to us. In the same way that, from an objective point of view, a lower legal norm must comply with a higher norm: for example, a decree must comply with the law adopted by the Parliament, just as this law must comply with the Constitution. This control of conformity is inherent in the hierarchy of norms.

Compliance Law is quite different, sometimes it is the opposite of that. Firstly, because it is more restricted than this 'conformity', since it does not involve complying with all the legal rules that apply to us. Compliance Law only targets certain subjects of law, mainly large companies, and about certain goals: the fight against corruption, the fight against money laundering, the fight against climate change, the fight against disinformation, the fight for equality between human beings, the fight for respect and dignity, the fight for the sustainability of systems, etc.

But Compliance Law is something else entirely, first and foremost because it is more ambitious than simple conformity!

It's not just about obeying the rules. It's for large companies to contribute to the struggles I've just mentioned: ensuring that corruption is reduced, money laundering stopped, equality between human beings achieved, climate balance achieved, energy sovereignty preserved, hatred eradicated, and so on.

These are "Monumental Goals"!

These Monumental Goals have several characteristics.

Firstly, Compliance Monumental Goals are political in nature: it is the political authorities which set these ambitions through legislation, usually backed up by public regulatory and supervisory authorities.

These political ambitions are internalised in these large companies, because these business entities are 'in the position' to contribute to achieving these goals: they have the money, the information, the geographical positions and the people to act effectively and efficiently in this direction.

These Monumental Goals are systemic in nature: the goal is to protect the systems: the banking, financial, energy, digital, health, climate and other systems.

The litigation that will ensue will itself be systemic: this systemic litigation is emerging before the courts.

These Monumental Goals can be either negative or positive.

The negative Monumental Goals justify the power of the "compliance tools": the goal is to prevent the systems mentioned above from collapsing. This is, for example, the Negative Monumental Goal that justifies the institution of the European Banking Union and the creation of the substantial European Banking Compliance Law.

Positive Monumental Goals are even more ambitious, as they aim to make systems even better than they are today. For example, not only should the digital space not be a space without disinformation (Negative Monumental Goal), but also with respect and education for everyone (Positive Monumental Goal).

This normative anchoring of Compliance in the Monumental Goals shows that the very object of Compliance Law is not the past, or even the present, but the future, the future of systems in order that human beings are not crushed by them but benefit from them.