Food for thoughts

► Référence complète : P.-Y. Gautier, « Contre le droit illimité à la preuve devant les autorités administratives indépendantes », Mélanges en l'honneur du Professeur Claude Lucas de Leyssac, LexisNexis, 2018, p.181-193.

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📘 Lire une présentation générale de l'ouvrage dans lequel l'article est publié

 

 

Cette bibliographie indicative vise des :

• ouvrages généraux

 

• ouvrages abordant la Régulation et la Compliance bancaire et financière à l'occasion d'un autre sujet principalement traité

 

• sites pertinents pour l'étude du Droit de la Régulation bancaire et financière

 

• ouvrages et articles portant spécifiquement sur la Régulation et la Compliance bancaire et financière

 

► Full Reference: Segonds, M., Compliance, Proportionality and Sanction. The example of the sanctions taken by the French Anticorruption Agency, in Frison-Roche, M.-A. (ed.),Compliance Monumental Goals, series "Compliance & Regulation", Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, to be published.

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► Article Summary:  Before devoting the developments of his article to the sole perspective of sanctions imposed under "Anti-corruption Compliance", the author recalls in a more general way that, as is the sanction, Compliance is in essence proportional: Proportionality is inherent to Compliance as it conditions any sanction, including a sanction imposed under Compliance.

This link between Proportionality and Compliance has been underlined by the French Anti-Corruption Agency (Agence française anticorruption - AFA) with regard to risk mapping, which must measure risks to arrive at effective and proportional measures. This same spirit of proportionality animates the recommendations of the AFA which are intended to apply according to the size of the company and its concrete organisation. It governs sanctions even more, in that punitive sanctions refer on one hand to Criminal Law, centered on the requirement of proportionality. Punitive sanctions It governs sanctions even more, in that punitive sanctions refer on the other hand to the disciplinary power of the manager who, from other sources of law, must integrate the legal requirement of proportionality when he/she applies external and internal compliance norms.

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📘see the general presentation of the book, Compliance Monumental Goals, in which this article is published

 

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► Référence complète : A.-M. Ilcheva, "Condamnation de Shell aux Pays-Bas : la responsabilité climatique des entreprises pétrolières se dessine", D. 2021, pp. 1968-1970

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► Résumé de l'article : Après une brève description de l'affaire en cause au principal, l'auteure explicite dans un premier les fondements du jugement dit "Shell". Elle explique que l'action engagée était fondée sur le droit de la responsabilité civile délictuelle néerlandais, plus précisément le "duty of care" de l'article 6:162 du code civil néerlandais, lequel amène le juge, afin d'établir le fait générateur, à apprécier le comportement de l'entreprise défenderesse au regard du standard de comportement de la personne prudente et raisonnable. Sont également mobilisés par le juge des travaux scientifiques (rapport du GIEC), des normes de droit international (CEDH) et des normes de droit souple (Principes directeurs de l'ONU), afin de caractériser tant le fait générateur que le dommage (notamment futur). Dans un second temps, l'auteure envisage la portée de ce jugement, frappé d'appel au moment de la rédaction de son article. Elle souligne que le juge s'est appuyé sur la notion d'entreprise, permettant ainsi de contourner l'obstacle traditionnel lié à la personnalité morale, et qu'il a retenu ici une responsabilité préventive, tournée vers le futur. Elle termine en mettant en avant les conditions nécessaires pour que ce jugement soit effectif et constate que l'effort demandé à l'entreprise est plus important que celui préconisé par les rapports d'experts.

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🦉Cet article est accessible en texte intégral pour les personnes inscrites aux enseignements de la Professeure Marie-Anne Frison-Roche

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► Full Reference: B. Deffains, "Debt as the basis of the 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 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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► 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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A monopoly refers to the power of a person to remove from a good its utility by excluding others. The monopoly refers to a situation on the market, the monopolist being the sole operator in the market. Lawyers are accustomed to the monopoly conferred by Law, for example the one that was the monopoly for the national public enterprise for electricity. In this case, what is done may be defeated, and the legislature may withdraw that privilege especially if the author of this norm is better placed in the hierarchy of norms than the previous author. For example, the European Union legislature withdrew the legal monopolies by means of directives from most of the operators holding them in the regulated sectors in order to liberalize them.

But the monopoly can have an economic source. Indeed, it may happen that a first operator constructs a structure, for example a wired telecommunications transport network. Because he is alone, agents on the market must resort to him to carry their communications, his business will be profitable. But from there, if a second operator built such an infrastructure, it would inevitably be in deficit for insufficient applicants. This is why no rational economic agent will build a second network. Thus, this network will remain unique. It is then an economically acquired monopoly that the legislative will can not change its nature. That is why it is called "natural".

Since what is can not be changed, Community law has taken note of the monopolistic nature of the majority of networks and the correlated power of their owner or manager, but has correlatively provided for their supervision by a regulator who not only Ex post to resolve possible differences between the infrastructure manager, the natural essential facility, and the one who wants to access it, but also, through an Ex ante power, to negotiate with that manager the return on his capital, his commitments investment in the network, etc., or even more directly by imposing on it the way in which it fixes access tariffs and so on.

These economically natural monopolies are therefore more powerful than legal monopolies, which States and lawyers have taken a long time to understand, but this also explains the reverse tendency of economists to write laws, The texts must handle this type of notions, its writers caring little about the political order and legal notions. The fact that the laws and regulations on regulated situations and supervised operators have long been elaborated solely from the point of view of lawyers, particularly of the public service, which was regrettable, does not justify this passage from one extreme to the other.

The procedural guarantees enjoyed by a person whose situation may be affected by a forthcoming judgment are mainly the right of action, the rights of defense and the benefit of the adversarial principle.

The rights of the defense have constitutional value and constitute human rights, benefiting everyone, including legal persons. The mission of positive Law is to give effect to them in good time, that is to say from the moment of the investigation or custody, which is manifested for example by the right to the assistance of a lawyer or the right to remain silent or the right to lie. Thus the rights of the defense are not intended to help the manifestation of the truth, do not help the judge or the effectiveness of repression - which is what the principle of adversarial law does - they are pure rights, subjective for the benefit of people, including even especially people who may be perfectly guilty, and seriously guilty.

The rights of the defense are therefore an anthology of prerogatives which are offered to the person implicated or likely to be or likely to be affected. It does not matter if it possibly affects the efficiency. These are human rights. This is why their most natural holder is the person prosecuted in criminal proceedings or facing a system of repression. This is why the triggering of the power of a tribunal or a judge offers them in a consubstantial way to the one who is by this sole fact - and legitimately - threatened by this legitimate violence (one of the definitions of the State ).

The rights of the defense therefore begin even before the trial because the "useful time" begins from the investigation phase, from the searches, even from the controls, and continues on the occasion of appeals against the decision adversely affecting the decision. The legal action being a means of being a party, that is to say of making arguments in its favor, and therefore of defending its case, shows that the plaintiff in the proceedings also holds legal defense rights since he is not only plaintiff in the proceedings but he also plaintiff and defendant to the allegations which are exchanged during the procedure: he alleged to the allegation of his opponent is not correct.

They take many forms and do not need to be expressly provided for in texts, since they are principled and constitutionally benefit from a broad interpretation (ad favorem interpretation). This is the right to be a party (for example the right of intervention, the right of action - which some distinguish from the rights of the defense - the right to be questioned, such as the right to be brought into question (or examination), right to be assisted by a lawyer, right to remain silent, right not to incriminate oneself, right of access to the file, right to intervene in the debate (the rights of the defense thus crossing the adversarial principle), right to appeal, etc.

It is essential to qualify an organ as a tribunal because this triggers for the benefit of the person concerned the procedural guarantees, including the rights of the defense, which on the basis of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights man was made about the Regulators yet formally organized in Independent Administrative Authorities (AAI). This contributed to the general movement of jurisdictionalization of Regulation.

Le légicentrisme exprime avant tout une bataille de normes, puisque cette doctrine pose que la loi est la seule et unique expression de la souveraineté de la Nation. En cela, la loi dispose d'une autorité indépassable et c'est elle qui fonde l'État légal.

Ainsi, si l'on devait donner une figure au système juridique, ce serait un cercle avec en son cœur d'une façon unique la loi souveraine, à la fois autosuffisante dans son fondement (souveraineté) et dans sa production (principe de légalité).

Cette conception moniste (unité de la loi) a pour principale source la philosophie politique de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, c'est encore sur celui-ci que la France conserve le principe de souveraineté parlementaire (le Gouvernement est responsable devant le Parlement) et de souveraineté de la loi. Mais depuis la Révolution française, les esprits et les faits ont changé.

Ainsi, s'est construite une doctrine inverse : le "pluralisme juridique" qui pose en contradiction que le droit vient de nombreuses sources, comme la coutume, les pratiques, les jugements, etc. Il n'est pas étonnant que les auteurs qui affirment le pluralisme juridique ne viennent pas de la philosophie politique mais davantage de la sociologie comme Gurvitch ou Carbonnier.

En outre, les frontières nationales ont perdu de leur consistance, de fait et de droit. C'est pourquoi un auteur comme Mireille Delmas-Marty s'appuie sur le fait même de la construction de l'Europe des droits de l'homme d'une part et de la globalisation d'autre part pour affirmer que le légicentrisme a fait place à un pluralisme juridique généralisé.

Cependant, en droit positif les textes restent les mêmes. C'est ainsi que l'article 6 de la Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen de 1789, qui fait partie du bloc de constitutionnalité, dispose de la loi que "la loi est l'expression de la volonté générale".

De la même façon, l'article 5 du Code civil continue d'interdire au juge de rendre des jugements contraignants pour d'autres cas que celui particulier sur lequel il se prononce.

Cette permanence des textes les plus gradés, à savoir l'article 5 du Code civil et l'article 6 de la déclaration pose de nombreux problèmes aux juges. En effet, depuis l'arrêt du Tribunal des conflits Blanco, le droit administratif n'est plus lié par ce qui est posé par le Code civil et sans doute la puissance normative du Conseil d'Etat s'exprime plus ouvertement que celle de la Cour de cassation, qui feint de ne rendre que des arrêts de principe pour pouvoir affirmer qu'elle ne rend pas d'arrêt de règlement.

D'une façon plus complexe, le Conseil constitutionnel rappelle régulièrement que certes il est le gardien de la norme constitutionnelle supérieure à la loi mais quand le même temps, seul le législateur, puisque celui est le souverain, peut exprimer la volonté générale, ce à quoi le Conseil constitutionnel ne peut se substituer.

Mais le Droit de l'Union européenne, qui constitue un Ordre juridique à la fois autonome et dont les normes sont pourtant intégrées dans les ordres juridiques des Etats-membres, rend difficilement soutenable la conception du légicentrisme. Y a succédée une hiérarchie des normes complexes. Mais les fondements politiques de l'idée de légicentrisme alimente en grande partie l'hostilité à l'égard de l'Europe, aussi bien celle de l'Union que celle de la CEDH.

 

"Liberalization" refers to the process of the legal end of a monopolistic organization of an economy, a sector or a market, in order to open it up to Competition.

Since it is rare for an economy to be entirely monopolistic (which presupposes an extreme concentration of political power), the phenomenon is more particularly characteristic of public sectors. Liberalization, if it is translated into Law only by a declaration of openness to Competition, is actually achieved only by a much slower implementation of the latter, since the incumbent operators have the power to check the entry of potential new entrants. This is why the process of liberalization is only effective if strong regulatory authorities are established to open up the market, weakening incumbent operators where necessary and offering benefits to new entrants through asymmetric regulation .

This Regulation aims to build Competition, now permitted by law.

This is why, in a process of Liberalization, Regulation aims to concretizeCcompetition by constructing it. This transitional regulation is intended to be withdrawn and the institutions set up to disappear, for example by becoming merely specialized chambers of the General Competition Authority, Regulation being temporary when linked to liberalization.

It is distinct from the Regulation of essential infrastructures which, as natural monopolies, must be definitively regulated. Quite often, in liberal economies, the State has asked public enterprises to manage such monopolies, particularly in the network industries, to which it has also entrusted the economic activity of the entire sector. By the liberalization phenomenon, most States have opted to retain the management of infrastructure for this operator, now an incumbent operator competing on the competing activities offered to consumers. In this respect, the Regulator forces it in two ways: in a transitional way to establish competition for the benefit of new entrants, in a definitive way insofar as it has been chosen by the State to manage the economic monopoly of infrastructure.

Even in the only relationship between competitors, Regulation has difficulty to retreat, and this often due to the Regulator. Max Weber's sociological rules  administration show about administration that the regulatory authorities, even in view of the purpose of competitive development, for example in the field of telecommunications, seek to remain, even though competition has actually been built. It does it by finding new purposes (in the above sector, the regulator could be the guardian of Net Neutralityt) or by affirming to practice a permanent "symmetric Regulation".

"Compliance" is the typical example of a translation problem.

Indeed and for example, the term "Compliance" is most often translated by the French term "Conformité". But to read the texts, notably in Financial Law, "Conformité" is aimed rather at professional obligations, mainly aimed at the ethics and conduct of market professionals, especially service providers of investment. It is both a clearer definition in its contours (and in this more certain) and less ambitious than that expressed by the "Compliance". It is therefore, for the moment, more prudent to retain, even in French, the expression "Compliance".

The definition of Compliance is both contentious and highly variable, since according to the authors, it goes solely from the professional obligations of financial market participants to the obligation to comply with laws and regulations. In this latter sense, that is, the general obligation that we all have to respect the Law. To admit that, Compliance would be Law itself.

Viewed from the point of view of Law, Compliance is a set of principles, rules, institutions and general or individual decisions, corpus of which the primary concern is efficiency, in space and in time. The purpose is to put into practice general interest goal targeted by these gathered techniques.

The list of these goals, whether negative ("fighting": corruption, terrorism, embezzlement of public funds, drug trafficking, trafficking in human beings, organ trafficking, trafficking in poisonous and contagious goods - medicines, financial products, etc.) or positive ("fighting for": access to essential goods for everyone, preservation of the environment, fundamental human rights, education, peace , transmission of the planet to future generations) shows that these are political goals.

These goals correspond to the political definition of the Regulatory Law.

These political goals require means which exceed the forces of the States, which are also confined within their borders.

These monumental goals have therefore been internalized by public authorities in global operators. The Compliance Law corresponds to a new structuring of these global operators. This explains why the new laws put in place not only objective but structural repressions, as in France the "Sapin 2 Law" (2016) or the "obligation of vigilance Law" (2017) .

This internationalization of the Regulatory Law  in companies implies that the public authorities now supervise the latter, even if they do not belong to a supervised sector, or even to a regulated sector, but participate, for example, in international trade.

The Law of Compliance thus expresses a global political will relayed by this violent new Law, most often repressive, on companies.

But it can also express on the part of the operators, in particular the "crucial operators" a desire to have themselves concern for these monumental global goals, whether of a negative or a positive nature. This ethical dimension, expressed in particular by the Corporate Social Responsibility, is the continuation of the spirit of the public service and the concern for the general interest, raised world-wide.

In Europe, Community Law prohibits States from providing aid to companies, which are analyzed as means for the benefit of their country which the State cares about (and sometimes wrongly)  having the effect and maybe the object of maintaining or constructing borders between peoples, thus contradicting the first European political project of a common area of peace and exchanges between the peoples of Europe. That is why this prohibition does not exist in the United States, since Antitrust Law is not intended to build such a space, which is already available to businesses and people.

This essential difference between the two zones changes industrial policies because the US federal Government can help sectors where Member States can not. The European prohibition of State Aid can not be called into question because it is associated with the political project of Europe. This seems to be an aporia since Europe is handicapped against the United States.

In any form it takes, Aid is prohibited because it distorts equality of opportunity in competition between  operators in the markets and constitutes a fundamental obstacle to the construction of a unified European internal market. On the basis of this simple principle, a branch of technical and specific law has developed, because States continue to support their entreprises and sectors, and many rules and cases divide this principe of prohibition into as many exceptions and nuances. Is built over the years a probation system related to it. Thus, the concept of a public enterprise was able to remain despite this principle of prohibition.

But if there is a crisis of such a nature or magnitude that the market does not succeed by its own forces to overcome and / or the European Union itself pursues a-competitive objectives, exogenous Regulation, which can then take the form of legitimate State Aid. Thus a sort of synonymy exists between State Aid and Regulation.

For this reason, the European institutions have asserted that State Aid becomes lawful when it intervenes either in strategic sectors, such as energy production in which the State must retain its power over assets, or the defense sector. Far from diminishing, this hypothesis is increasing. European Union Law also allows the State to intervene by lending to financial operators threatened with default or already failing, the State whose function is to fight systemic risk, directly or through its Central Bank. The aid can come from the European Central Bank itself helping States in issuing sovereign debt, the Court of Justice having admitted in 2015 the non-conventional monetary policy programs compliance with the treaties. In 2010, the European Commissioner for Competition stressed that public aid is essential tools for States to deal with crises, before regulations come to the fore in 2014 to lay the foundations of the European Banking Union.

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"

The procedural safeguards enjoyed by a person whose situation may be affected by a future judgment are principally the right to bring proceedings before the court, the rights of the defense and the benefit of the contradictory principle.

The legal action was for a long time considered as a "power", that is to say, a mechanism inserted in the organization of the judicial institution, since it was by this act of seizure, access by which the person enters the judicial machine, through the latter starts up.

But in particular since the work of René Cassin and Henri Motulsky, legal proceedings are considered as a subjective right, that is to say, a prerogative of any person to ask a judge to rule on the claim that the plaintiff articulates in an allegation, that is a story mixing the fact and the law in a building and on which he asks the judge to give an answer, such as the cancellation of an acte, or the award of damages, or the refusal to convict him (because the defense is also the exercise of this right of action).

The legal action is now recognized as a "right of action", the nature of which is independent of the application made to the court, a subjective procedural right which doubles the substantive subjective right (eg the right to reparation) and ensures the effectiveness of the latter but which is autonomous of it. This autonomy and this uniqueness in contrast with the variety of the sort of disputes (civil, criminal or administrative) makes the right of action a pillar of the "Procedural Law" on which a part of European and Constitutional Law are built. In fact, Constitutional Law in Europe is essentially constituted by procedural principles (rights of defense, impartiality, right of action), since the principle of non bis in idem is only an expression of the right of action. Non bis in idem is a prohibition of double judgment for the same fact which does not prohibit a double trigger of the action (and criminal, civil and administrative). This unified due process of Law has helped to diminish the once radical separation between criminal law, administrative law and even civil law, which are clearly separated from one another in the traditional construction of legal systems and which converge today in the Regulatory and Compliance Law.

Moreover, the subjective right of action is a human right and one of the most important. Indeed, it is "the right to the judge" because by its exercise the person obliges a judge to answer him, that is to say to listen to his claim (the contradictory resulting therefore from the exercise of the right of action ).

Thus the right of action appears to be the property of the person, of the litigant, of the "party". This is why the attribution by the law of the power for the Regulators to seize itself, which is understood by reason of the efficiency of the process, poses difficulty from the moment that this constitutes the regulatory body in "judge and party", since the Regulator is in criminal matters regarded as a court, and that the cumulation of the qualification of court and of the quality of party is a consubstantial infringement of the principle of impartiality. In the same way, the obligation that Compliance Law creates for operators to judge themselves obliges them to a similar duplication which poses many procedural difficulties, notably in internal investigations.

There is a classical distinction between public action, which is carried out by the public prosecutor, by which the public prosecutor calls for protection of the general interest and private action by a person or an enterprise, which seeks to satisfy its legitimate private interest. The existence of this legitimate interest is sufficient for the person to exercise his or her procedural right of action.

In the first place, the person could not claim the general interest because he or she was not an agent of the State and organizations such as associations or other non-governmental organizations pursued a collective interest, which could not be confused with the general interest. This procedural principle according to which "no one pleads by prosecutor" is today outdated. Indeed, and for the sake of efficiency, Law admits that persons act in order that the rule of law may apply to subjects who, without such action, would not be accountable. By this procedural use of the theory of incentives, because the one who acts is rewarded while and because he or she serves the general interest, concretizing the rule of law and contributing to produce a disciplinary effect on a sector and powerful operators, procedural law is transformed by the economic analysis of the law. The US mechanism of the class action was imported into France by a recent law of 2014 on "group action" (rather restrictive) but this "collective action" , on the Canadian model, continues not to be accepted in the European Union , Even if the European Commission is working to promote the mechanisms of private enforcement, participating in the same idea.

Secondly, it may happen that the law requires the person not only must have a "legitimate interest in acting" but also must have a special quality to act. This is particularly true of the various corporate officers within the operators. For the sake of efficiency, the legal system tends to distribute new "qualities to act" even though there is not necessarily an interest, for example in the new system of whistleblowers, which can act even there is no apparent interest.

The goal for which a mechanism, a solution an institution or a rule is adopted, instituted or elaborated, is in principle external to them. Knowledge of this goal is a tool to better understand them and is only that.

On the contrary, in Regulation Law, the goal is the heart itself. By definition, Regulation Law is a set of instruments that articulate to take their meaning in relation to a goal. Moreover, these instruments are legitimate to represent a constraint only because they realize a goal which is itself legitimate. The interpretation of Regulation Law is based on the aims pursued: the reasoning is teleological.

This teleological nature explains that efficiency is no longer merely a concern - as for ordinary legal mechanisms, but rather a principle of Regulation Law. It explains the welcome, especially through the European Union Law of the theory of the useful effect. This link between rules, which are only means, and aims, refers to the principle of proportionality, which requires that constraints and exceptions be applied only when they are necessary, proportionality being the form off the classic principle of necessity.

Because the aim is the center, it must be expressed by the author of the Regulation standards, and this is all the more so if they are of a political nature, being not limited to mitigating technical failures of markets. This goal can be varied: the management of systemic risks, but also the consideration of the fundamental rights of people, the preservation of the environment, public health, civilization, education, etc. The silence of the legislature, which limits itself to the making of rules whereas these are merely instruments, without explicating the goal whereas the latter is a political decision, is a fault in the legislative art.

Moreover, in order that the person who applies the Regulation norm, in particular the Regulator and the Judge, has no excessive margin for interpretation and does not substitute for political power, the author of the Regulation norm needs to aim specifically for one goal : in this way, the one who applies the norm will be constrained. Or, if the author targets several purposes, then he must articulate them in relation to each other, by hierarchizing them for example. If he fails to do so, the institution which applies the regulatory standards will itself have to choose the purpose and exercise a power which he does not possess.

This express designation of purpose has been made for the European Banking Union,  this Regulation and Supervision construction, whose primary aim is to prevent systemic risks and resolve crises. Similarly, the purpose of the Regulation of essentiel infrastructures is to provide third parties access to the network. Similarly, in the case of a transitional regulation introduced following liberalization, the aim is to establish competition, the principle of which has been declared by the liberalization law. When this is not clearly stated, there is a lapse in the legislative art.

 

 

Référence : Grenoble, 5 nov. 2020, I.D. c/ Société Corin France

Lire l'arrêt. 

Référence complète : Grandjean, J.P., rapporteur, Rapport sur l'avocat chargé d'une enquête interne, Conseil de l'Ordre des Avocats, Paris, 8 mars 2016. 

 

Lire le rapport. 

 

Watch the video explaining the "right to be forgotten".

The "right to be forgotten" is a recent and specifically European invention. It was designed by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Google Spain judgment of May 13, 2014, so that in this world without time, in which all information is eternally stored and available that is the digital world, the individual thus exposed can be protected against this new phenomenon, since forgetting no longer exists, by Law which by its power endows it with a "right to be forgotten". In this the term Right to be forgotten is more accurate.

Because Law is made to protect human beings, the technological efficiency which created the digital world is limited by the new legal prerogative of the person to make unattainable information which concerns him when it takes on a "personal character". This was taken up by the community regulation of April 27, 2016, often called GDPR, transposed in the member states of the European Union no later than May 25, 2018.

More than in the laws which have taken up the idea of ​​protection of persons in the handling of "data" by others, expressing more the concern to protect the consumer in a market economy, it is a question of directly protecting persons. in a technological world allowing blind obedience, Europe rejecting this model because the technique of the files left him a terrible memory because of the Second World War. However, Law is the memory of peoples and expresses the “spirit” of these (Savigny).

The economic theory of incentives implicitly assumes that an operator can not be compelled to act against his will, or at least that it is more efficient to offer him advantages in such a way that he does what he wants . In this, this conception is opposed to the traditional conception of Law, which posits, on the contrary, that subjects obey the order dictated by the legal norm.

But in globalized markets, operators have the tools to disobey and the asymmetry of information diminishes the power of control of the Regulators, which raises doubts as to the effectiveness of the legal constraint: it is not enough that the Law orders. In these circumstances, texts, regulators and judges must produce conditions that encourage agents to adopt behaviors that are consistent with the aims sought by the Regulators because the operators themselves have an interest in them.

Thus, whilst regulatory systems in any sector become increasingly repressive, even in liberal economies, it is not so much to punish the perpetrator but to incite others who are tempted to commit crimes, To abandon them. It is the system of exemplarity. This thought prior to Beccaria participates in the re-feoadization of the Law, demonstrated by Pierre Legendre, associated with the decline of the State and to which the Regulation fully participates. Judgeshave little inclination to handle repression in this way, which creates a clash between Criminal Law and Regulatory Law, which nevertheless puts repression at its center.

In the same way, Regulatory Systems must inject positive incentives, for example rewards for communication of information, which encourages delation, or incentives done by the regulator for the network manager make investments in the maintenance of it, against the immediate interest of its shareholder. Finally, all patent law and economics are now thought of as an incentive to inn/en/article/innovation/ovate. But, some incentives have proven perverse such as stock-options or bonuses. As a result, new texts seek to regulate these.

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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Concevoir l'Obligation de Compliance : faire usage de sa position pour participer à la réalisation des Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance" ("Conceiving the Compliance Obligation: Using its Position to take part in achieving the Compliance Monumental Goals"), 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 article (in French)

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🚧read the bilingual Working Paper on the basis this contribution has been built, with  more developments, technical references and hyperlinks. 

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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: Rather than getting bogged down in definitional disputes, given that Compliance Law is itself a incipient branch of Law, the idea of this contribution is to take as a starting point the different regimes of so many different compliance obligations to which laws and regulations subject large companies: sometimes they must apply them to the letter and sometimes they are only penalised in the event of fault or negligence. This brings us back to the distinction between obligations of result and obligations of means.

Although it might be risky to transpose the expression and regime of contractual obligations to legal obligations, starting from this observation in the Compliance Evidentiary System of a plurality of obligations of means and of result, depending on whether we are dealing with this or that technical compliance obligation, we must first classify them. It would appear that this plurality does not constitute a definitive obstacle to the creation of a single definition of the Compliance Obligation. On the contrary, it makes it possible to clarify the situation, to trace the paths through what is so often described as a legal jumble, an unmanageable mass of regulations.

Indeed, insofar as the company obliged under Compliance Law participates in the achievement of the Monumental Goals on which this branch of Law is normatively based, a legal obligation which may be relayed by contract or even by ethics, it can only be an obligation of means, by virtue of this very teleological nature and the scale of the goals targeted, for example the happy outcome of the climate crisis which is beginning or the desired effective equality between human beings. This established principle leaves room for the fact that the behaviour required is marked out by processes put in place by structured tools, most often legally described, for example the establishment of a vigilance plan or regularly organised training courses (effectiveness), are obligations of result, while the positive effects produced by this plan or these training courses (efficacy) are obligations of means. This is even more the case when the aim is to transform the system as a whole, i.e. to ensure that the system is solidly based, that there is a culture of equality, and that everyone respects everyone else - all of which come under the heading of efficiency.

The Compliance Obligation thus appears unified because, gradually, and whatever the various compliance obligations in question, their intensity or their sector, its structural process prerequisites are first and foremost structures to be established which the Law, through the Judge in particular, will require to be put in place but will not require anything more, whereas striving towards the achievement of the aforementioned Monumental Goals will be an obligation of means, which may seem lighter, but corresponds to an immeasurable ambition, linked with these Goals. Moreover, because these structures (warning platforms, training, audits, contracts and clauses, etc.) only have meaning in order to produce effects and behaviour leading to changes converging towards the Monumental Goals, it is the obligations of means that are most important and not the obligations of result. The judge must also take this into account.

Finally, the Compliance Obligation, which therefore consists of this interweaving of multiple compliance obligations of result and means of using the Entreprise's position, ultimately aims at system efficiency, in Europe at system civilisation, for which companies must show not so much that they have followed the processes correctly (result) but that this has produced effects that converge with the Goals sought by the legislator (effects produced according to a credible trajectory). This is how a crucial economic operator, responsible Ex Ante, should organise itself and behave.

 

 

 

 

 

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Complete reference : Archives de Philosophie du Droit (APD), Droit et économie, tome 37, ed. Sirey, 1992, 426 p. 

 

Read the table of contents.

Read the summaries of the articles in english. 

 

See the presentation of others volumes of Archives de Philosophie du Droit.

Référence complète Fox, E., The new world order, in Mélanges Joël Monéger, Liber Amicorum en l'honneur du Professeur Joël Monéger, LexisNexis, 2017, 818 p.  

 

The State's traditional view is that it serves the general interest through its public services, either directly (by its administrations, or even by public enterprises), or by delegation (eg through the concession mechanism). Public service is generally defined in a functional way, ie through public service missions that the organization must perform, such as providing public transport or caring for the population whatever (Eg in France by the public firm the SNCF). The liberalization of those public sectors, the primary reference to the market as a means of achieving the general interest, the primary reference to competition and the play of the European Law has destroyed this intimacy between public service, general interest, public enterprise and State.

Today, in a dialectical game, the Regulation keeps this concern for public service missions in balance with the competition, in a competitive context and under the control of a Regulator. The system is more complex and challenging because it creates new difficulties, such as information asymmetry or less easy integration of long-term planning, but it is better suited to an open and globalized economy.

Paradoxically, the notion of conflict of interest seems to be at the center of Economic Law only recently in Economic Law, in both Corporate and Public Law. This is due to the philosophy which animates these two branches of Law, very different for each, and which has changed in each.

In fact, and in the first place in Public Law, in the Continental legal systems and especially in French legal tradition, on the side of the State, the one who serves it, by a sort of natural effect,, makes the general interest incarnated by the State pass before its personal interest. There is an opposition of interests, namely the personal interest of this public official who would like to work less and earn more, and the common interest of the population, who would like to pay less taxes and for example benefit trains that always arrive on time and the general interest which would be for example the construction of a European rail network.

But this conflict would be resolved "naturally" because the public official, having "a sense of the general interest" and being animated by the "sense of public service", sacrifices himself to serve the general interes. He stays late at his office and gets the trains on time. This theory of public service was the inheritance of royalty, a system in which the King is at the service of the People, like the aristocracy is in the "service of the King." There could therefore be no conflict of interest, neither in the administration nor in the public enterprises, nor to observe, manage or dissolve. The question does not arise ...

Let us now take the side of the companies, seen by the Company Law. In the classical conception of corporate governance, corporate officers are necessarily shareholders of the company and the profits are mandatorily distributed among all partners: the partnership agreement is a "contract of common interest". Thus, the corporate officer works in the knowledge that the fruits of his efforts will come back to him through the profits he will receive as a partner. Whatever its egoism - and even the agent must be, this mechanism produces the satisfaction of all the other partners who mechanically will also receive the profits. Selfishness is indeed the motor of the system, as in the classical theory of Market and Competition. Thus, in the corporate mechanism, there is never a conflict of interest since the corporate officer is obligatorily associated: he will always work in the interest of the partners since in this he works for himself. As Company Law posits that the loss of the company will also be incurred and suffered by all partners, he will also avoid this prospect. Again, there is no need for any control. The question of a conflict of interest between the mandatary and those who conferred this function does not structurally arise...

These two representations both proved inaccurate. They were based on quite different philosophies - the public official being supposed to have exceeded his own interest, the corporate officer being supposed to serve the common interest or the social interest by concern for his own interest - but this was by  a unique reasoning that these two representations were defeated.

Let us take the first on Public Law: the "sense of the State" is not so common in the administration and the public enterprises, that the people who work there sacrifice themselves for the social group. They are human beings like the others. Researchers in economics and finance, through this elementary reflection of suspicion, have shattered these political and legal representations. In particular, it has been observed that the institutional lifestyle of public enterprises, very close to the government and their leaders, is often not very justified, whereas it is paid by the taxpayer, that is, by the social group which they claimed to serve. Europe, by affirming in the Treaty of Rome the principle of "neutrality of the capital of enterprises", that is to say, indifference to the fact that the enterprise has as its shareholder a private person or a public person, validated this absence of exceeding of his particular interest by the servant of the State, become simple economic agent. This made it possible to reach the conclusion made for Company Law.

Disillusionment was of the same magnitude. It has been observed that the corporate officer, ordinary human being, is not devoted to the company and does not have the only benefit of the profits he will later receive as a partner. He sometimes gets very little, so he can receive very many advantages (financial, pecuniary or in kind, direct or indirect). The other shareholders see their profits decrease accordingly. They are thus in a conflict of interest. Moreover, the corporate officer was elected by the shareholders' meeting, that is to say, in practice, the majority shareholder or the "controlling" shareholder (controlling shareholder) and not by all. He may not even be associated (but a "senior officer").

The very fact that the situation is no longer qualified by lawyers, through the qualifications of classical Company Law, still borrowing from the Civil Contract Law, the qualifications coming more from financial theories, borrowing from the theory of the agency, adically changed the perspective. The assumptions have been reversed: by the same "nature effect", the conflict of interest has been disclosed as structurally existing between the manager and the minority shareholder. Since the minority shareholder does not have the de facto power to dismiss the corporate officer since he does not have the majority of the voting rights, the question does not even arise whether the manager has or has not a corporate status: the minority shareholder has only the power to sell his securities, if the management of the manager is unfavorable (right of exit) or the power to say, protest and make known. This presupposes that he is informed, which will put at the center of a new Company Law information, even transparency.

Thus, this conflict of interests finds a solution in the actual transfer of securities, beyond the legal principle of negotiability. For this reason, if the company is listed, the conflict of interest is translated dialectically into a relationship between the corporate officer and the financial market which, by its liquidity, allows the agent to be sanctioned, and also provides information, Financial market and the minority shareholder becoming identical. The manager could certainly have a "sense of social interest", a sort of equivalent of the state's sense for a civil servant, if he had an ethics, which would feed a self-regulation. Few people believe in the reality of this hypothesis. By pragmatism, it is more readily accepted that the manager will prefer his interest to that of the minority shareholder. Indeed, he can serve his personal interest rather than the interest for which a power has been given to him through the informational rent he has, and the asymmetry of information he enjoys. All the regulation will intervene to reduce this asymmetry of information and to equip the minority shareholder thanks to the regulator who defends the interests of the market against the corporate officers, if necessary through the criminal law. But the belief in managerial volunteerism has recently taken on a new dimension with corporate social responsability, the social responsibility of the company where managers express their concern for others.

The identification of conflicts of interests, their prevention and their management are transforming Financial Regulatory Law and then the Common Law of Regulation, because today it is no longer believed a priori that people exceed their personal interest to serve the interest of others. It is perhaps to regain trust and even sympathy that companies have invested in social responsibility. The latter is elaborated by rules which are at first very flexible but which can also express a concern for the general interest. In this, it can meet Compliance Law and express on behalf of the companies a concern for the general interest, if the companies provide proof of this concern.

To take an example of a conflict of interest that resulted in substantial legal changes, the potentially dangerous situation of credit rating agencies has been pointed out when they are both paid by banks, advising them and designing products, While being the source of the ratings, the main indices from which the investments are made. Banks being the first financial intermediaries, these conflicts of interest are therefore systematically dangerous. That is why in Europe ESMA exercises control over these rating agencies.

The identification of conflicts of interest, which most often involves changing the way we look at a situation - which seemed normal until the point of view changes - the moral and legal perspective being different, Trust one has in this person or another one modifying this look, is today what moves the most in Regulation Law.
This is true of Public and Corporate Law, which are extended by the Regulation Law, here itself transformed by Compliance Law, notably by the launchers of alerts. But this is also true that all political institutions and elected officials.

For a rule emerges: the more central the notion of conflict of interest becomes, the more it must be realized that Trust is no longer given a priori, either to a person, to a function, to a mechanism, to a system. Trust is no longer given only a posteriori in procedures that burden the action, where one must give to see continuously that one has deserved this trust.

The insurance sector has always been regulated in that it presents a very high systemic risk, since the economic operators' strength is required for the operation of the sector and the bankruptcy of one of them may weaken or even collapse all. In addition, insurance is the sector in which moral hazard is the highest, since the insured will tend to minimize the risks to which he is exposed in order to pay the lowest premium possible, even though ehe company is engaged to cover an accident whose size can not be measured in advance. Thus, the science of insurance is above all that of probabilities.

The recent challenge of regulating insurance, both institutional, the construction and the powers of the regulator of the sector, and also functional, namely the relations that it must have with the other bodies and institutions, lies mainly in the relationship between the insurance regulator and the bank regulator, which refers to the concept of "interregulation." If the formal criteria are followed, the two sectors are distinct and the regulators must be similarly separated. There was the case in France before 2010. En 2010, considering activities, sensitive to the fact that insurance products, for example life insurance contracts, are mostly financial products, and moreover, through the notion of "bank-insurance", the same companies engage in both economic activities, the solution of an unique body has been chosen.

A part from the fact that in Competition Law companies are defined by market activity, the main consideration is that the risk of contamination and spread is common between insurance sector and banking sector. For this reason, the French  Ordinance of 21 January 2010 created the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel -ACP (French Prudential Supervisory Authority), which covers both insurance companies and banks, since their soundness must be subject to similar requirements and to an organization common. The law of July 2013 entrusted this Authority with the task of organizing the restructuring of these enterprises, thus becoming the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution - ACPR  (French Prudential Control and Resolution Authority).

However, the substantive rules are not unified, on the one hand because the insurers are not in favor of such assimilation with banks, secondly because the texts, essentially the European Directive on the insolvency of insurance companies ("Solvency II") , eemain specific to them, and at a distance from the Basel rules applying to banks, which contradict the institutional rapprochement exposed before. European construction reflects the specificity of the insurance sector, the Regulation of 23 November 2010 establishing EIOPA, which is a European quasi-regulator for pension funds, including insurance companies.

The current issue of insurance regulatory system is precisely the European construction. While the Banking Union, the Europe of banking regulation, is being built, the Europe of Insurance Regulation is not being built. Already because, rightly, it does not want to merge into the banking Europe, negotiations of the texts of "Solvency II" stumbling on this question of principle. We find this first truth: in practice, it is the definitions that count. Here: Can an insurance company define itself as a bank like any other?

L'enjeu actuel de la Régulation assurantielle est précisément la construction européenne. Tandis que par l’Union bancaire, l’Europe de la régulation bancaire se construit, l’Europe de la Régulation assurantielle ne se construit. Déjà parce que, à juste titre, elle ne veut pas se fondre dans l’Europe bancaire, les négociations des textes de « Solvabilité II » achoppant sur cette question de principe. L’on retrouve cette vérité première : en pratique, ce sont les définitions qui compte. Ici : une compagnie d’assurance peut-elle se définir comme une banque comme une autre ?