Food for thoughts

Référence complète : Boy, , "Réflexion sur le "droit de la régulation". A propos du texte de Marie-Anne Frison-Roche",  D., chron., 2001, p.3031 et s.

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The Office of Communications (Ofcom) is the UK's communications regulator.

This independent regulator is competent both for television, radio and television services, but also for the post office.

In addition, there are very diverse missions, such as not only the allocation of licenses but also data protection or public policies of diversity and equality.

We can consider that these are the broadest competences that can be conferred on a regulator with regard to "communication" activities!footnote-767.

Sont ici répertoriés les sujets proposés chaque année, soit au titre du travail à faire en parallèle du cours, à remettre à la fin du semestre (le jour de l'examen étant la date limite de remise), soit les sujets à traiter sur table, sans documentation extérieure et sous surveillance le jour de l'examen final. 

A partir de 2019, en raison du règlement administratif de la scolarité, l'examen final ne peut plus se dérouler en dehors du cours.

Les étudiants cessent donc de bénéficier d'une durée de 4 heures pour réaliser l'examen.

Le contrôle final est donc nécessairement réalisé pendant la durée de 2 heures du dernier cours de l'enseignement, supprimé pour être remplacé par ce contrôle sur table. Les sujets sont désormais choisis en considération de ce format. 

Retourner sur la description générale du Cours de Droit commun de la Régulation, comprenant notamment des fiches méthodologiques. 

► Full Reference: M. Torre-Schaub, "La compliance environnementale et climatique" ("Environmental and Climate Compliance"), in M.-A. Frison-Roche (dir.), L'Obligation de Compliance, Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Dalloz, coll. "Régulations & Compliance", to be published

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📕lire une présentation générale de l'ouvrage, L'Obligation de Compliance, dans lequel cet article est publié

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► Summary of this contribution  (done by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance) : The author starts from the fact that Compliance Law, in that it is not limited to conformity process, and Environmental Law are complementary, both based above all on the prevention of risks and harmful behaviour, environmental crises and the right to a healthy environment involving the strengthening of Environmental Vigilance. It is all the more important to do this because definitions remain imprecise, not least those of Environment and Climate, which are diffuse concepts.

Firstly, the contribution sets out the purpose of Environmental Compliance, which is to ensure that companies are vigilant with regard to all kinds of risks: they put in place and follow a series of processes to obtain "progress" in accordance with a standard of "reasonable vigilance". This requires them to go beyond mere conformity and encourages them to develop their own soft law tools within a framework of information and transparency, so that the climate system itself benefits in accordance with its own objectives.

Then the author stresses the preventive nature of Environmental Vigilance mechanisms, which go beyond providing Information to managing risks upstream, in particular through the vigilance plan, which may be unified or drawn up risk by risk, and which must be adapted to the company, particularly in the risk mapping drawn up, with assessment being carried out on a case-by-case basis.

Lastly, in the light of recent French case law, the author describes the implementation of the system, which may bring the parties before the Tribunal judiciaire de Paris (Paris Court of First Instance) and then the specialised chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal. The author believes that judges must clarify the obligation of Environmental Vigilance so that companies can adjust to it, and these 2 courts are in the process of doing so.

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🦉This article is available in full text to those registered for Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche's courses

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► Full Reference: J.-B. Racine, "Compliance Obligation and Human Rights​", in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Compliance Obligation, Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, "Compliance & Regulation" Serie, to be published

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📘read a general presentation of the book, Compliance Obligation, in which this article is published

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► Summary of the article (done by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance - JoRC): The author asks whether human rights can, over and above the many compliance obligations, form the basis of the Compliance Obligation. The consideration of human rights corresponds to the fundamentalisation of Law, crossing both Private and Public Law, and are considered by some as the matrix of many legal mechanisms, including international ones. They prescribe values that can thus be disseminated.

Human rights come into direct contact with Compliance Law as soon as Compliance Law is defined as "the internalisation in certain operators of the obligation to structure themselves in order to achieve goals which are not natural to them, goals which are set by public authorities responsible for the future of social groups, goals which these companies must willingly or by force aim to achieve, simply because they are in a position to achieve them". These "Monumental Goals" converge on human beings, and therefore the protection of their rights by companies. 

In a globalised context, the State can either act through mandatory regulations, or do nothing, or force companies to act through Compliance Law. For this to be effective, tools are needed to enable 'crucial' operators to take responsibility ex ante, as illustrated in particular by the French law on the Vigilance Obligation of 2017.

This obligation takes the form of both a "legal obligation", expression which is quite  imprecise, found for example in the duty of vigilance of the French 2017 law, and in a more technical sense through an obligation that the company establishes, in particular through contracts.

Legal obligations are justified by the fact that the protection of human rights is primarily the responsibility of States, particularly in the international arena. Even if it is only a question of Soft Law, non-binding Law, this tendency can be found in the Ruggie principles, which go beyond the obligation of States not to violate human rights, to a positive obligation to protect them effectively. The question of whether this could apply not only to States but also to companies is hotly debated. If we look at the ICSID Urbaser v. Argentina award of 2016, the arbitrators accepted that a company had an obligation not to violate human rights, but rejected an obligation to protect them effectively. In European Law, the GDPR, DSA and AIA, and in France the so-called Vigilance law, use Compliance Lools, often Compliance by Design, to protect human rights ex ante.

Contracts, particularly through the inclusion of multiple clauses in often international contracts, express the "privatisation" of human rights. Care should be taken to ensure that appropriate sanctions are associated with them and that they do not give rise to situations of contractual imbalance. The relationship of obligation in tort makes it necessary to articulate the Ex Ante logic and the Ex Post logic and to conceive what the judge can order.

The author concludes that "la compliance oblige à remodeler les catégories classiques du droit dans l’optique de les adosser à l’objectif même de la compliance : non pas uniquement un droit tourné vers le passé, mais un droit ancré dans les enjeux du futur ; non pas un droit émanant exclusivement de la contrainte publique, mais un droit s’appuyant sur de la normativité privée ; non pas un droit strictement territorialisé, mais un droit appréhendant l’espace transnational" ("Compliance requires us to reshape the classic categories of Law with a view to bringing them into line with the very objective of Compliance: not just a Law turned towards the past, but a Law anchored in the challenges of the future; not a Law emanating exclusively from public constraint, but a Law based on private normativity; not a strictly territorialised Law, but a law apprehending the transnational space".

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🦉This article is available in full text to those registered for Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche's courses

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► Full Reference: B. Deffains, "La dette comme fondement de l'obligation de compliance" ("From the Debt to the Compliance Obligation"), in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), L'Obligation de Compliance, Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Dalloz, "Régulations & Compliance" Serie, 2024, to be published

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

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► Summary of this contribution  (done by the Journal  of Regulation  & Compliance):  The contribution builds on the definition of Compliance in that it requires large companies to contribute to the achievement of Monumental Goals, including the preservation of human rights and systems, e.g. climate system.  

This requirement is confronted with the notion of Debt as it results today from classic and new works available in economic science. In fact, in the primitive economy, debt refers not only to exchanges, but also to an ethical and social obligation leading back to the collective. The Economic Analysis of Law has highlighted this situation, where some of the entities involved in a situation benefit from positive externalities, or endure negative externalities on their own, thus creating a situation of debt: this generates an obligation to correct market failure through an obligation to manage risks, as expressed by Compliance Obligation. This implies that economic calculation can be used to quantify this debt, leading to new proposals for biodiversity accounting.

The author then highlights the recognition of Debt as the source of an Compliance Obligation. This can be expressed through the classical notion of natural obligation, which can be traced back to the French Civil Code, or through more solidarist or political conceptions of Law, linked to moral responsibility, with the overall moral equilibrium referring to civic duty, superimposed on the accounting equilibrium. The political dimension is very much present, as shown by Grotius and Kant, then Bourgeois (solidarism), Rawls and Sen (social justice), who link the deep commitment of each individual with the group. This sheds light on the essential role played by the State and public institutions in formalising and enforcing the Compliance Obligation, not only to ensure its effectiveness, but also to make everyone aware of its fairness dimension.

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🦉This article is available in full text to those registered for Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche's courses

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Formally, the legal system had constructed the regulatory authorities in the form of Independent Administrative Authorities (AAI).

The stake being to build their independence in an institutional and consubstantial way, the Legislator conferred a new status: that of Independent Public Authority (API). Thus, the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), the Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés (CNIL), the Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS) or HADOPI are classified among APIs and not only among IAAs.

We must therefore see two distinct legal categories, AAI on the one hand and APIs on the other.

Thus the two laws of January 20, 2017 relate, to better supervise them, both on AAIs and on APIs, but reading the preparatory work shows that the two categories show that they are treated in a fairly common way. Even more if one consults the sites of certain regulatory authorities themselves, such as HADOPI, for example, it presents itself as an "Independent Public Authority" but defines this legal category as being that which targets the Authorities. Independent Administrative .....

It thus appears that the category of Independent Public Authorities is above all marked by the symbol of a greater dignity than that of the category of "simply" Administrative Independent Authorities. From a technical point of view, the two categories are essentially distinguished from a budgetary point of view, financial autonomy being the nerve of independence. This is how the AMF's budget is based on the size of market operations, through tax mechanisms that are not included in the LOLF. Independence does not extend to autonomy, the API does not negotiate its budget with Parliament, since an Independent Public Authority is not a Constitutional Authority.

The term "breach" is new in Law. In the legal order, the term "fault" is that which is retained to designate the behavior of a person who deviates from a rule and must be sanctioned, because by this act he has manifested a fraudulent intention which may is reproached to him. But the legal notion of fault, which was central in the classic Law of civil liability and was essential in criminal liability Law has the major drawback of calling for proof: that of the intention to "do wrong". This seems all the less adequate when it comes to assessing the behavior of organizations, such as companies, whose behavior and power must be controlled more than the faulty behavior of their leaders sanctioned.

This is why both to lighten the burden of proof concerning natural persons, in particular those with the power and the function of deciding for others (managers, "senior executives") and to better correspond to the distribution of the power of The action, which is now held by organizations, in particular companies, are "failures" and no longer faults or negligence which constitute the triggering events triggering their liability or justifying repression.

It is more particularly an administrative repression, the end of which is not to sanction misconduct but to effectively protect the regulated sectors. The sanction for breaches is therefore both easier, because it is always necessary to prove the intention, and more violent, because the sanctions attached can relate to a share of the profits withdrawn, to a share of the turnover. business of the operator or can take the form of commitments by the operator for the future, a very restrictive and new form of sanction that the compliance technique has inserted into the law.

Thus the breach can be defined as a behavior, even an organization which is away from the behavior or the situation that the author of a text has posed as being that which he posits as adequate. This definition, which is at the same time broad, abstract, teleological and prescription, which makes it possible to apprehend not only behaviors but also structures, makes the sanction of breaches a daily tool of Regulatory Law.

The procedural guarantees from which the person benefits are mainly the right of action, the rights of defense and the benefit of the adversarial principle.

While the rights of the defense are subjective rights which are advantages given to the person at risk of having his situation affected by the decision that the body which is formally or functionally legally qualified as a "tribunal", may take, the adversarial principle is rather a principle of organization of the procedure, from which the person can benefit.

This principle, as the term indicates, is - as are the rights of the defense - of such a nature as to generate all the technical mechanisms which serve it, including in the silence of the texts, imply a broad interpretation of these.

The adversarial principle implies that the debate between all the arguments, in particular all the possible interpretations, is possible. It is exceptionally and justified, for example because of urgency or a justified requirement of secrecy (professional secrecy, secrecy of private life, industrial secrecy, defense secrecy, etc.) that the adversarial mechanism is ruled out. , sometimes only for a time (technique of deferred litigation by the admission of the procedure on request).

This participation in the debate must be fully possible for the debater, in particular access to the file, knowledge of the existence of the instance, the intelligibility of the terms of the debate, not only the facts, but also the language (translator, lawyer , intelligibility of the subject), but still discussion on the applicable legal rules). So when the court automatically comes under the rules of Law, it must submit them to adversarial debate before possibly applying them.

The application of the adversarial principle often crosses the rights of the defense, but in that it is linked to the notion of debate, it develops all the more as the procedure is of the adversarial type.

The market is normally self-regulated. It suffers from one-time failures when economic agents engage in anti-competitive behavior, mainly the abuse of dominant positions in the ordinary markets, or the abuse of markets in the financial markets, sanctioned ex post by the authorities in individual decisions.

But some sectors suffer from structural failures, which prevent them, even without malicious intent of agents, from reaching this mechanism of adjustment of supply and demand. The existence of an economically natural monopoly, for example a transport network, constitutes a structural failure. Another agent will not duplicate once the first network has been built, which prevents competition. An a-competitive regulation, either by nationalization, by a state control or by a control by a regulatory authority, is needed to ensure everyone's access to an essential facility. Also constitutes a market failure asymmetry of information, theorized through the notion of agency that hinders the availability and circulation of exhaustive and reliable information on markets, especially financial markets. This market failure carries with it a systemic risk, against which regulation is definitely built and entrusted to financial regulators and central banks.

In these cases, the implementation of regulations is a reaction of the State not so much by political rejection of the Market, but because the competitive economy is unfit to function. This has nothing to do with the hypothesis that the State is distancing itself from the Market, not because it is structurally flawed in relation to its own model, but because politics wants to impose higher values, expressed By the public service, whose market does not always satisfy the missions.

Retourner à la présentation générale du Cours.

Cette bibliographie générale rassemble quelques références générales, qui se superposent ou croisent les bibliographies plus spécifiques sur :

• Doctrine (par ordre alphabétique), la présentation distinguant quelques ouvrages généraux avant de répertorie des études pertinentes pour comprendre le "Droit commun de la Régulation"

• Textes de droit international, textes de systèmes juridiques étrangers,textes de l'Union européennes, textes de droit français

• Littérature grise

Référence complète : Boursier, M.-E., L’irrésistible ascension du whistleblowing en droit financier s’étend aux abus de marché, Bulletin Joly Bourse, 1ier septembre 2016.

Les étudiants de Sciences po peuvent lire l'article en accédant au dossier "MAFR - Régulation"

► Full Reference: M. Séjean, "The Compliance Obligation in the Cybersecurity Field: a web of behavioural requirements to protect the System", in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Compliance Obligation, Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, "Compliance & Regulation" Serie, to be published

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📘read a general presentation of the book, Compliance Obligation, in which this article is published

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► Summary of the article (done by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance - JoRC): 

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🦉This article is available in full text to those registered for Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche's courses

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► Référence complète : Association des professionnels du contentieux économique et financier (APCEF), La réparation du préjudice économique et financier par les juridictions pénales, 2019.

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Lire le rapport : 

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► Full Reference: L. Rapp, "Compliance, Value Chains and Service Economy", in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Compliance Obligation, Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, "Compliance & Regulation" Serie, to be published

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📘read a general presentation of the book, Compliance Obligation, in which this article is published

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► Summary of the article (done by the author, translated by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance - JoRC): Based on an analysis of the value chains of companies in the space sector and their recent evolution, this contribution examine the role, place and current transformations of compliance policies and strategies in the context of an industrial transformation that has become essential: the transition from an industrial economy to a service economy.

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🦉This article is available in full text to those registered for Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche's courses

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► Full Reference: R. Sève, "Compliance Obligation and changes in Sovereignty and Citizenship", in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Compliance Obligation, Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, "Compliance & Regulation" Serie, to be published

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📘read a general presentation of the book, Compliance Obligation, in which this article is published

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► Summary of the article (done by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance - JoRC): 

The contribution describes "les changements de philosophie du droit que la notion de compliance peut impliquer par rapport à la représentation moderne de l’Etat assurant l’effectivité des lois issues de la volonté générale, dans le respect des libertés fondamentales qui constituent l’essence du sujet de droit." ("the changes in legal philosophy that the notion of Compliance may imply in relation to the modern representation of the State ensuring the effectiveness of laws resulting from the general will, while respecting the fundamental freedoms that constitute the essence of the subject of law").

The contributor believes that the definition of Compliance is due to authors who « jouer un rôle d’éclairage et de structuration d’un vaste ensemble d’idées et de phénomènes précédemment envisagés de manière disjointe.  Pour ce qui nous occupe, c’est sûrement le cas de la théorie de la compliance, développée en France par Marie-Anne Frison-Roche dans la lignée de grands économistes (Jean-Jacques Laffont, Jean Tirole) et dont la première forme résidait dans les travaux bien connus de la Professeure sur le droit de la régulation. » ( "play a role in illuminating and structuring a vast set of ideas and phenomena previously considered in a disjointed manner.  For our purposes, this is certainly the case with the theory of Compliance, developed in France by Marie-Anne Frison-Roche in the tradition of great economists (Jean-Jacques Laffont, Jean Tirole) and whose first form was in her well-known work on Regulatory Law").

Drawing on the Principles of the Law of the American Law Institute, which considers compliance to be a "set of rules, principles, controls, authorities, offices and practices designed to ensure that an organisation conforms to external and internal norms", he stresses that Compliance thus appears to be a neutral mechanism aimed at efficiency through a move towards Ex Ante. But he stresses that the novelty lies in the fact that it is aimed 'only' at future events, by 'refounding' and 'monumentalising' the matter through the notion of 'monumental goals' conceived by Marie-Anne Frison-Roche, giving rise to a new jus comune. Thus, "la compliance c’est l’idée permanente du droit appliquée à de nouveaux contextes et défis." ("Compliance is the permanent idea of Law applied to new contexts and challenges"). 

So it's not a question of making budget savings, but rather of continuing to apply the philosophy of the Social Contract to complex issues, particularly environmental issues. 

This renews the place occupied by the Citizen, who appears not only as an individual, as in the classical Greek concept and that of Rousseau, but also through entities such as NGOs, while large companies, because they alone have the means to pursue the Compliance Monumental Goals, would be like "super-citizens", something that the digital space is beginning to experience, at the risk of the individuals themselves disappearing as a result of "surveillance capitalism". But in the same way that thinking about the Social Contract is linked to thinking about capitalism, Compliance is part of a logical historical extension, without any fundamental break: "C’est le développement et la complexité du capitalisme qui forcent à introduire dans les entités privées des mécanismes procéduraux d’essence bureaucratique, pour discipliner les salariés, contenir les critiques internes et externes, soutenir les managers en place" ("It is the development and complexity of capitalism that forces us to introduce procedural mechanisms of a bureaucratic nature into private entities, in order to discipline employees, contain internal and external criticism, and support the managers in place") by forcing them to justify remuneration, benefits, and so on.

Furthermore, in the words of the author, "Avec les buts monumentaux, - la prise en compte des effets lointains, diffus, agrégés par delà les frontières, de l’intérêt des générations futures, de tous les êtres vivants - ,  on passe, pour ainsi dire, à une dimension industrielle de l’éthique, que seuls de vastes systèmes de traitement de l’information permettent d’envisager effectivement." ("With the Monumental Goals - taking into account the distant, diffuse effects, aggregated across borders, the interests of future generations, of all living beings - we move, so to speak, to an industrial dimension of ethics, which only vast information processing systems can effectively envisage").

This is how we can find a division between artificial intelligence and human beings in organisations, particularly companies, or in decision-making processes.

In the same way, individual freedom does not disappear with Compliance, because it is precisely one of its monumental goals to enable individuals to make choices in a complex environment, particularly in the digital space where the democratic system is now at stake, while technical mechanisms such as early warning will revive the right to civil disobedience, invalidating the complaint of "surveillance capitalism".

The author concludes that the stakes are so high that Compliance, which has already overcome the distinctions between Private and Public Law and between national and international law, must also overcome the distinction between Information and secrecy, particularly in view of cyber-risks, which requires the State to develop and implement non-public Compliance strategies to safeguard the future.

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🦉This article is available in full text to those registered for Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche's courses

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Le plan des 6 cours d'amphi est en principe  actualisé chaque semaine au fur et à mesure que les cours se déroulent en amphi.

S'il s'avère que la crise sanitaire conduit à ramasser la mise à disposition de l'ensemble du cours en début de semestre, cette actualisation ne sera pas possible. 

Cela sera alors compensé par l'envoi en courriel tout au long du semestre d'actualités commentées liées à la matière. 

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Voir le plan ci-dessous⤵

Référence complète : Gauvain, R. et Marleix, O., Rapport d'information sur l'évaluation de l'impact de la loi n° 2016-1691 du 9 décembre 2016 relative à la transparence, à la lutte contre la corruption et à la modernisation de la vie économique, 2021.

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Lire le rapport. 

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► Full Reference: D. Gutmann, "Tax Law and Compliance Obligation", in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Compliance Obligation, Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, "Compliance & Regulation" Serie, to be published

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📘read a general presentation of the book, Compliance Obligation, in which this article is published

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► Summary of the article (done by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance - JoRC): The author takes up the hypothesis of a Compliance Law defined by its Monumental Goals, the realisation of which is entrusted to "crucial operators" and confronts it with Tax Law. The link is particularly effective since these operators possess what governments need in this area: relevant Information.

Going further, Compliance Law can give rise to two types of obligations on the part of these operators, either towards others operators who need to be monitored, corrected or denounced, or towards themselves, when they need to make amends.

In the first part of this contribution, the author shows that Compliance Obligation reproduces the mechanism of a Tax Law which, for large companies, is embroiled in a process of increasing Globalisation. It enables Governments to aspire to the "Monumental Goals" of combating tax optimisation and impoverishing governments, victims of the erosion of the tax base, in the face of the strategies of companies that are more powerful than they are themselves, by using this very power of firms to turn it against them. Companies become the willing or de facto allies of governments, particularly when it comes to recovering tax debts, or assist them in their stated ambition to achieve social justice.  In this way, the State "manages" Tax Law by cooperating with companies.

In the second part, the author outlines the contours of this business Compliance Obligation, which is no longer simply a matter of paying tax. Beyond this financial obligation, it is more a question of mastering Information, particularly when multinational companies are subject to specific tax reporting obligations and are required to reveal their tax strategy, presumed to be transparent and coherent within the group : this legal presumption gives rise to obligations to seek information and ensure coherence, since a single tax strategy is not self-evident in a group.

The author emphasises that companies have accepted the principles governing these new compliance obligations and are tending to transform these obligations, particularly Transparency, into a communication strategy, in line with the ESG criteria that have been developed and a desire for fruitful relations with stakeholders. Therefore the tax relations developed by major companies are being extended not only to the tax authorities, but also to NGOs, by incorporating a strong ethical dimension. This is leading to new strategies, particularly in the area of Vigilance.

The author concludes: "A n’en pas douter, l’obligation de compliance existe bel et bien en matière fiscale." ("There is no doubt that the Compliance Obligation does exist in tax matters").

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🦉This article is available in full text to those registered for Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche's courses

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is the independent regulatory authority in the United States that regulates at the federal level both the container and the content of telecommunications.

In this, the United States differs from the European Union, a legal space in which most often the regulatory institutions of the container and the content are distinct (for example in France ARCEP / CSA / CNIL) and in which the regulations of communications remain substantially at the level of the Member States of the Union.

Like other audiovisual regulators, it ensures pluralism of information by limiting the concentration of capital - and therefore of power - in the television and radio sector. We can thus see that the American system is not in principle different from the European system.

In addition, the FCC is characterized first of all by a very great power, imposing at the same time substantial principles on the operators, like that of the "decency", going in the name of this principle until sanctioning television channels which had let show a bare breast of a woman. The control is therefore more substantial than in Europe, this control weighing against the constitutional freedom of expression which is more powerful in the United States than in Europe. It is true that today the leading digital companies tend to formulate for us what is beautiful, good and decent, in place of public authorities.

The FCC continued to develop the major principles of the public communication system, as in 2015 that of the Open Internet (Open Internet) or to formulate the principle of "digital neutrality", adopted by a federal law, this principle having considerable economic and political implications.

But at the same time, a general mark of American law, the judge moderates this power, according to the principle of Check and Balance. Thus the Supreme Court of the United States in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation in 1978 this power of direct control of the content but also operates the control of the control.

The election in 2016 of a new president who is, among other things, totally hostile to the very idea of ​​Regulation is a test in the probative sense of the term. In January 2017, he appointed a new president of the FCC, hostile to any regulation and in particular to the principle of neutrality. The question which arises is to know if technically a regulation already established on these principles can resist, how and for how long, a political will violently and expressly contrary. And what will the judges do.

► Référence complète : Agence française anticorruption (AFA), Guide du contrôle comptable anticorruption, 2022. 

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► Lire le guide

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📧 Lire le commentaire fait par Marie-Anne Frison-Roche de ce guide. 

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A Central Bank is for the Law a rather mysterious object.

Despite what some competition authorities have said, it is not an ordinary bank. It is at the root of monetary creation and its primary mission is to fight against inflation, contributing more or less directly and in a more or less independent way according to political and legal systems to the economic policy pursued by governments.

Thus, while central banks all have constitutional status which guarantees autonomy, they have a more limited mission in Europe than in the United States. This is even more evident since monetary cre - ation has been transferred to the European Central Bank (ECB), which makes it even more necessary to interpret what the Central Bank can do, Reminded the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in 2015 of the ECB's non-conventional monetary policy programs.

The central bankers either directly by a department or indirectly by an independent administrative authority (IAA) backed by them and who, although independent, have no legal personality with regard to them ( for example in the French system concerning the " Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de resolution - ACPR) exercises regulatory and supervisory powers over the banking and insurance sectors.

As such, they are regulators. When en Europe the power to create money has been taken away from them, passing from the Member States to the European Central Bank (ECB)  through the Euro Zone, it is this regulatory and supervisory power which remains their own, their mission being only to participate in the European collective mechanism.

But for exercising its regulatory and supervisory role, the central bankers have considerable powers, including approval, sanction and, since 2013 and 2014, resolution. But in this respect it must be considered that, in particular with regard to the European Convention on Human Rights, central bankers are like courts and in the exercise of numerous powers, procedural guarantees must be conferred on operators who are the object of those powers.

► Full Reference: O. Douvreleur,  "Compliance and Judge ruling only on points of Law", in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Compliance Jurisdictionalisation, series "Compliance & Regulation", Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, to be published. 

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► Article Summary (done by the Journal of Regulation): Compliance maintains with the judge complex relations, and even more with the judge ruling only on points of Law  (in France, the Court de Cassation in the judicial order, the one who, in principle, does not know the facts that he leaves to the sovereign appreciation of the judges ruling on the substance of the disputes. At first glance, compliance is a technique internalised in companies and the place occupied by negotiated justice techniques leave little room for intervention by the judge ruling only on points of Law

However, his role is intended to develop, in particular with regard to the duty of vigilance or in the articulation between the different branches of Law when compliance meets Labor Law, or even in the adjustment between American Law and the other legal systems, especially French legal system. The way in which the principle of Proportionality will take place in Compliance Law is also a major issue for the judge ruling only on points of Law.

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📘 read the general presentation of the book, Compliance Jurisdictionalisation, in which this article is published

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Legally, the State is a public law subject defined by territory, people and institutions. It acts in the international space and emits norms. Politically, it has the legitimacy required to express the will of the social body and to exercise the violence of which it deprives the other subjects of law. It is often recognizable by its power: its use of public force, its budgetary power, its jurisdictional power. These three powers, declining or being challenged by private, international and more satisfying mechanisms, some predicted the disappearance of the State, to deplore it or to dance on its corpse.

With such a background, in current theories of Regulation, primarily constructed by economic thought and at first sight one might say that the State is above all the enemy. And this for two main reasons. The first is theoretical and of a negative nature. The advocates of the theory of regulation deny the State the political qualities set out above. The State would not be a "person" but rather a group of individuals, civil servants, elected officials and other concrete human beings, expressing nothing but their particular interests, coming into conflict with other interests, and using their powers to serve the former rather than the latter as everyone else. The Regulation theory, adjoining the theory of the agency, is then aimed at controlling public agents and elected representatives in whom there is no reason to trust a priori.

The second reason is practical and positive. The State would not be a "person" but an organization. Here we find the same perspective as for the concept of enterprise, which classical lawyers conceive as a person or a group of people, while economists who conceive of the world through the market represent it as an organization. The state as an organization should be "efficient" or even "optimal". It is then the pragmatic function of the Regulation Law. When it is governed by traditional law, entangled by that it would be an almost religious illusions of the general interest, or even the social contract, it is suboptimal. The Regulation purpose is about making it more effective.

To this end, as an organization, the State is divided into independent regulatory agencies or independent administrative authorities that manage the subjects as close as possible, which is fortunate in reducing the asymmetry of information and in reviving trust in a direct link. The unitary, distant and arrogant State is abandoned for a flexible and pragmatic conception of a strategic state (without capital ...) that would finally have understood that it is an organization like any other ...

Competition law adopts this conception of the State, which it posed from the beginning that it was an economic operator like any other. This is how this conception which would be  more "neutral" of the world is often presented.

Successive crises, whether sanitary or financial, have produced a pendulum effect.

Now, the notions of general interest or common goods are credited of an autonomous value, and the necessity of surpassing immediate interests and of finding persons to bear superior interests or to take charge of the interests of others, even a non-immediate one, emerged.

Thus, the State or the public authority, reappears in the globalization. The Compliance Law or the Corporal Social Responsibility of the crucial companies are converging towards a consideration of the State, which can not be reduced to a pure and simple organization receptacle of externalities.

The notion of "Common Goods" refers to a political conception insofar as it concerns objectively commercial goods such as cultural goods or medical services, but which the community is going to demand that everyone should have access to it even though the individual does not have the ability to pay the exact price. It is then the taxpayer - present or future - or the social partners who bear the cost, or even some companies, through the corporal social social responsibility mechanism.

This protection of Common Goods can be done by the State in the name of the interest of the social group for which it is responsible and whose it expresses the will, particularly through the notion of the general interest. In this now restricted framework which is the State, this reference runs counter to the principle of competition. This is particularly clear in Europe, which is based on a Union built on an autonomous and integrated legal order in the Member States in which competition continues to have a principled value and benefits from the hierarchy of norms. The evolution of European Law has balanced the principle of competition with other principles, such as the management of systemic risks, for example health, financial or environmental risks and the creation of the banking union shows that the principle of competition is no longer an apex in the European system.

But it still remains to an economic and financial conception of Europe, definition that the definition of the Regulatory Law  when it is restricted to the management of the market failures feeds. It is conceivable that Europe will one day evolve towards a more humanistic conception of Regulatory  Law, the same one that the European States practice and defend, notably through the notion of public service. Indeed and traditionally, public services give people access to common goods, such as education, health or culture.

Paradoxically, even though Law is not set up on a global scale, it is at this level that the legal notion of "common goods" has developed.

When one refers to goods that are called "global goods", one then seeks goods that are common to humanity, such as oceans or civilizations. It is at once the heart of Nature and the heart of Human Being, which plunges into the past and the future. Paradoxically, the concept of "global goods" is still more political in substance, but because of a lack of global political governance, effective protection is difficult, as their political consecration can only be effective nationally or simply declaratory internationally. That is why this balance is at present only at national level, which refers to the difficulty of regulating globalization.

Thus, the "common goods" legally exist more under their black face: the "global evils" or "global ills" or "global failures", against which a "Global Law" actually takes place. The notion of "global evils" constitutes a sort of mirror of Common Goods. It is then observed that countries that develop legal discourse to regulate global evils and global goods thus deploy global unilateral national Law. This is the case in the United States, notably in financial regulatory Law or more broadly through the new Compliance Law, which is being born. Companies have a role to play, particularly through Codes of Conduct and Corporate Social Responsibility.