Food for thoughts

Full Reference: Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF) , Administrative Decision of 16 March 2020, Banque Internationale du Luxembourg (BIL). 

Read the Decision presentation (in French and in English)

This working document served as the basis for an article, contribution in the collective book Compliance Tools, 2020

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Summary of this working paper:

Training is a specific Compliance tool and a dimension that each Compliance tool expresses. 

Firstly, as a training it is a specific Compliance Tool, it is supervised by Regulators. It even becomes compulsory when it is contained in Compliance programs. Since the effectivity and the efficiency are legal requirements, what is therefore the margin of companies to design it and how can we measure its result?

Secondly, as each Compliance Tool contains, more and more, an educational dimension, we can take back each of them to detect this perspective. Thus, even sanctions and prescriptions, are lessons: lessons given, lessons to follow. The question is then to know who, in this so pedagogic Compliance Law, are the "instructors"?

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Introduction:

Training is akin to these things - and very precious - that we do, or even dream of doing, but so poorly expressed from the moment we take them as an object of technical writing. Just do it.

It would be however unfortunate to publish a book on Compliance Tools without giving a particular place to training, the piece would miss in the puzzle.

So much money spent by companies, by fair or foul means, especially when Compliance programs imposed as sanctions contain heavy training obligations leading people to retain word for word everything that is forbidden to them, in order to always abstain from now on. Training is thus the sharp point of such Hard Law appearing under the steel of Criminal Law's sword in amphitheaters and e-learnings. 

But also so much speeches about the necessity of a "Compliance culture" which should be instilled to firms, Compliance spousing with joy in an harmony with their "raison d'être" and the historical identity of this group of people which is the company itself through trainings which tell Compliance as a link, an outstretched hand toward those with whom managers want to renew a moral contract in an ethic for which they give the good example. It is not Prohibition anymore but Communication and Community that set the tone of a human dialogue with employees, stakeholders, administration and judges. 

It is possible to assume that the former does not exclude the latter, that Training should target all of this, the learning of mandatory prescriptions to follow without discussion but also the adhesion to guidelines, and this because everyone has understood that they are funded.

Everything and its contrary, then. "Learning by heart" takes here its full sense: get everyone to remember mechanically in order for no one to misstep (with always more machines which massively teach us the regulatory corpus on our mobile screens) but also succeed in bringing our "heart" in Compliance, thanks to specific training methods (with always smaller groups, with always less public discussions in pleasant places). Everything and its contrary, then.

It would be imperative but also sufficient to cumulate. Doing everything. Those who propose training softwares as those who organize conferences, meetings and travels and are favorable to this addition of face-to-face and distancing methods, of mechanic and of human relations. Concretely, at the end companies observe that since the first does not replace the second, costs add up. But, in Compliance, costs constitute a grave default of it, training taking a large part of this default. Managers end up finding the addition too heavy, especially if they thought that training of people is one of the public school's mission and not one of private companies' purpose!footnote-1837.

Moreover, training to Compliance is not outside Compliance Law, which makes it specific!footnote-1838. Indeed, Compliance Law, corpus of Ex Ante mechanisms, targets to concretize "monumental goals"!footnote-1836. Set by public authorities, these monumental goals are internalized in companies in order for them to implement expected means in order for them to be reached in the future. These monumental goals can be negative (that corruption, money laundering, human rights violations, financial system crisis, etc. shall not occur), or positive (that ecological equilibrium shall be restored, that education shall be supplied, that healthcare shall be provided, etc.).

Compliance Law takes as criteria of effectivity for implemented mechanisms, their reality, but also their efficiency, that is their ability to make sure their goal is achieved.Training must achieve its goal. Thus, in Compliance, the purpose is not only the one of every training, that is transmitting a knowledge in order to making the student more learned!footnote-1839, but it is to contribute to the "monumental goal" of Compliance Law itself, which is a practical goal and not a scholar goal. For example, training about the applicable rules concerning corruption should have an effect to reduce corruption. And because corruption is itself a part of Compliance Law, in the same way the Regulation Authority can force to educate oneself or train others, the Supervision Authority should control not only the reality but also the effectivity and the efficiency of trainings. 

However, the effectivity and the efficiency of Compliance training, because they are full part of Compliance Law, should be controlled by the Authority not only in their reality but also in their concrete ability to participate in the pursued goal. Thus, to keep the example of fight against corruption, training plays in it an essential role because the firm faces an alternative: either a mechanic solution consisting in setting literal interdictions, for example the interdiction to give up a value greater than a certain amount (according to the "anti-gift" rule) with the risk of getting around that every literal prescription offers, or a a solution by training consisting in explaining to everybody that it is wrong to corrupt but that it is acceptable to give samples. Training rather bets on spirit while the machine integrates the letter. 

But this refers to the Regulation and Supervision Authority which will appreciate the company due diligences to reach the goals. One observes that, more and more, Authorities economize one step: rather than explain to the companies how educate people that work for them or with them, regulators educate directly.  Is on this point remarkable the "guide" published in 2012, whose second edition of 2019 has been updated in 2020, jointly by the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the financial regulator (Securities &Exchanges Commission - SEC) to know everything about the Foreign Corruption Practices Act (FCPA). Through the explanations offered to everyone!footnote-1840 of the principles, the reminded definitions, the told cases, they are behaviors prescriptions which are formulated especially for foreign companies by the prosecutor authority and the American sanction authority, allied in this handbook which has such weight that we can consider that it is as valuable as a guideline, soft law creator of Law and rights. 

In the concentration of all powers which is often reproached to the Regulator, there is also the magisterium of the teacher, the one who educates stakeholders. After having assumed, on the American model, that the regulator should be the "advocate" of the rules for companies, proving to them the interest  that they have to respect them, it is logical that, in what some have called "Regulation, Act 2" this Regulator's pleading about the good news of Regulation for the firm justifying thus that this one integrates it in Ex Ante was prolonged in magistral lesson: the "regulator-institutor" explains to everybody how using rules for an always still in progress Law ("Better Regulation"). 

While training was before only peripheral, it is now at the heart. If it is so important, as every other "Compliance tool", it should take what we expect from it. The publications about training most often exhibit what it should be and a sorrowful spirit measures what sometimes appears as a huge gap between descriptions and realities sometimes reported. 

Educating being without any doubt one of the most difficult actions, we should probably neither describe a paradise of maieutics nor write a hot paper against what already has  the merit to exist, but list what we can expect from Training mechanisms when they apply to Compliance, because here, rather more than for the other tools, it is a mean obligation. Which content should have a training ? (I). Because Compliance Law targets training as one of the mean to reach "monumental goals" which constitutes the substantial heart of this branch of Law, the training dimension is not limited to stamped training, finding back this pedagogical dimension in almost all the other tools (II). In that, Training appears as the alpha and the omega of Compliance.

Full reference: Thouret, T., Le pharmacien, un "opérateur crucial" pour prévenir une crise des opiacés en France, Actu-juridiques, Lextenso, 2020

Lire l'article (in French)

Référence complète : ARCEP, précisions sur les lgnes directrices révisées destinées à guider les régulateurs européens dans la mise en œuvre du règlement « internet ouvert » , Juillet 2020. 

Lire le document publié par l'ARCEP.

Ces "lignes directrices" ne sont elles-même qu'un document, sans doute de nature pédagogique et d' "aide", puisqu'il s'agit de "guider les régulateurs" européens dans la mise en oeuvre des textes dont la nature juridique ne fait pas de doute : les règlements européens de 2018 dits "Internet ouvert". 

Ces "lignes directrices" (catégorie qualifiée souvent de "droit souple") ont été adoptées par les Régulateurs eux-mêmes, réunies dans le BEREC, qui est l'organe informel qui réunit les Autorités nationales des Etats-membres en matière de télécommunication. 

Ce cours constitue la première partie d'un triptyque permettant de mieux comprendre les rapports que l'Etat entretient via le Droit avec les marchés.  

Ce cours pose donc les base d'un Droit commun de la Régulation, enseignement qui a vocation à être enrichi au semestre suivant par la perspective des Droits sectoriels de la Régulation, voire au semestre ultérieur par une approche du nouveau Droit de la Compliance. Ce dernier cours est commun avec l'Ecole du Management et de l'Innovation car la Régulation est alors internalisée dans les entreprises elles-mêmes. 

Le livret de cours du Droit commun de la Régulation  décrit le contenu et les objectifs du cours. Il détaille en outre la façon dont les étudiants, qui suivent cet enseignement situé dans l'École d'affaires publiques de Science po, sont évalués afin de valider cet enseignement. Il précise la charge du travail qui est demandé.

Comme ce sont des matières assez difficiles d'accès et nouvelles, l'enseignement à distance accroissant sans doute cette difficulté, deux instruments ont été construits :

• Dictionnaire bilingue du Droit de la Régulation et de la Compliance
• Newsletter MAFR - Law, Compliance, Regulation

La consultation de l'un et de l'autre facilite l'apprentissage. 

Les thèmes des leçons qui composent successivement le cours sont énumérés.

Les lectures conseillés sont précisées.

Les étudiants inscrits au Cours ont été connectés au dossier documentaire "MAFR - Régulation & Compliance", présent sur le drive de Science po, où sont disponibles documents cités dans le Cours. 

A partir de ce livret, chaque document support de chaque leçon est accessible.

Voir ci-dessous plus de détails sur chacun de ces points, ainsi que la liste des leçons.

Reference complète : Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (CSA), Bilan Infox, 2019.

Lire le rapport. 

Ce rapport sera bientôt aussi disponible en anglais. 

Référence complète : C.E., 10 juillet 2020, Association des Amis de la Terre France et autres

Lire la décision.

Sur le site du Conseil d'Etat, cette décision est nommée "Pollution de l'air".

On peut y lire aussi le communiqué de presse.

Le lien numérique qui mène à cette décision (slug) a pour titre "decision-importante".

Référence complète : Agence Française Anticorruption (AFA), Rapport Annuel 2020 pour 2019. 

Lire le rapport. 

► Full reference: M.-E. Boursier, "Qu'est-ce que la compliance ? Essai de définition", D. 2020, Chron., p. 1419-1424. 

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► Summary of the article (done by the author, in French): Au-delà de la diversité de ses sources et de ses finalités, de la variabilité de sa valeur normative et des sanctions encourues, apparaît un élément commun à toutes les déclinaisons de la compliance : la méthode par laquelle elle se déploie.

La compliance se définit avant tout comme une méthode, inspirée des théories de la procéduralisation du droit. Elle consiste en une « internalisation », par l'entreprise et dans l'entreprise, de systèmes de conformité (cartographie des risques, procédures, vigilance, alerte) qui conduisent in fine les opérateurs économiques à assister les États dans la réalisation de leurs missions (lutte contre les grandes infractions du droit pénal des affaires internationales comme le blanchiment et la corruption, respect des droits humains, etc.).

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Référence complète : Frison-Roche, M.-A., participation à la Table-ronde du Campus du Barreau de Paris, sur "Le droit de la compliance : une solution pour les crises présentes et à venir ?", 9 juillet 2020. 

Consulter la présentation des intervenants à cette table-ronde. 

Présentation par les organisateurs du sujet discuté par les participants à la Table-ronde : 

"Crise sanitaire, crise économique, urgence climatique … les réponses étatiques ou inter-étatiques ont-elles montré leurs limites dans la gestion de ces crises ou restent-elles incontournables ?

Faut-il au contraire envisager, via le droit de la compliance, d’impliquer et de responsabiliser davantage les entreprises pour une meilleure prévention de ces risques à l’échelle planétaire?".

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Consulter les slides servant de support à la présentation générale du thème, ouvrant cette Table-Ronde. 

Cette intervention s'adosse notamment à une étude précédemment écrite affirmant que le Droit de la Compliance est une branche nouvelle du Droit apte à prévenir et à gérer les crises sanitaires, présentes et futures : Compliance Law, Health Crisis and Future, 2020. 

► Référence complète : L.-M. Augagneur, "Les aspects relatifs à la circulation des données dans les programmes de conformité en droit de la concurrence", in J.-Ch. Roda (dir.), Compliance et droit de la concurrence : nouveaux défis, nouveaux enjeux, Revue internationale de la compliance et de l'éthique des affaires, n° 3, juin 2020, étude 111, pp. 21-25.

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► Résumé de l'article (fait par l'auteur) : "The risk assessment of antitrust practices involving datas could be uncertain in consideration of the increasing production and circulation of datas, their algorithmic use, and the intricate operation of the concerned markets. Far from being limited to a standard system or technology solutionism, relevant compliance programs should rely on the own advocacy policy of the firm. This policy can be designed by identifying competition key factors and habits implemented throughout the data’s life cycle." (traduction libre : "L'évaluation des risques liés aux pratiques antitrust impliquant des données pourrait être incertaine compte tenu de la production et de la circulation croissantes des données, de leur utilisation algorithmique et du fonctionnement complexe des marchés concernés. Loin de se limiter à un système standard ou à un solutionnisme technologique, les programmes de conformité pertinents devraient s'appuyer sur la politique de défense des intérêts de l'entreprise. Cette politique peut être conçue en identifiant les facteurs clés de la concurrence et les habitudes mises en œuvre tout au long du cycle de vie des données.")

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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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► Référence complète : J.-Ch. Roda, "Compliance et antitrust. Le discours de la méthode", in J.-Ch. Roda (dir.), Compliance et droit de la concurrence : nouveaux défis, nouveaux enjeux, Revue internationale de la compliance et de l'éthique des affaires, n° 3, juin 2020, étude 109, pp. 11-15.

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► Résumé de l'article (fait par l'auteur) : "The discourses of the competition authorities are essential for the dissemination of the compliance culture. Their comparative analysis reveals significant divergences that may explain the differences in compliance adherence." (traduction libre : "Les discours des autorités de concurrence sont essentiels pour la diffusion d'une culture de compliance. Leur analyse comparative révèle des divergences significatives, qui peuvent expliquer les différences d'adhésion à la compliance.")

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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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Référence complète : Department of Justice & Securities & Exchanges Commission, FCPA Ressource Guide, June 2020, 132 pages.

Lire le document (en anglais). 

Full reference: Faure-Muntian, Valeria and Fasquelle, Daniel, Information Report of the Commission des Affaires économiques (committee on economic affairs) on digital platforms, Assemblée National (National Assembly), June 2020, 104p.

Read the Report

Full reference: Rapport sur la responsabilité des sociétés et de leurs dirigeants en matière sociale et environnementale et examens des conséquences juridiques associées aux modifications apportées à l'article 1833 et 1835 du Code Civil, Haut Comité Juridique de la Place Financière de Paris, 19th of June 2020

Read the report

Like the precedent cycles dedicated to the general topic of Compliance, aiming to build a "Compliance Law" and aiming also to be published in the series Regulation & Compliance, coedited by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance and Dalloz, this cycle continues to deepen a specific aspect of this emerging branch of Law which has been applied before being designed.  

The year 2020-2021 will give rise to two full and distinct cycles, the former deepening a key concept of Compliance Law, that are "monumental goals" and the later deepening a phenomenon with multiple roots and consequences: "the juridictionnalization of Compliance". 

The juridictionnalization of Compliance is perhaps as ancient as Compliance mechanisms themselves.  

These various conferences will take place in different places, according to the role played by the very numerous universities which, this year once again, support the Journal of Regulation & Compliance for the realization of this cycle. This cycle will give rise to two books, one in French: La Juridictionnalisation de la Compliance, and the other in English : Juridictionnalization of Compliance. 

This cycle of colloquia The juridictionnalization of Compliance will start in October 2020 and will take place until December 2021.

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♾️subscribe to the Newsletter MAFR Regulation, Compliance, Law 

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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, The dreamed Compliance Law, Working Paper, June 2020. 

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This Working Paper, "The Dreamed Compliance Law", is the basis for an article, written in French, "La compliance" (Compliance), inserted in the collective work to be published under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Racine, Le Droit économique du XXIème siècle (The XXIe century Economic Law , in the Serie Droit & Economie,   LGDJ-Lextenso, 2020.

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No one can know what the Law of the 21st century will be. Pretending to know it is just not to realize its ignorance. Why then writing about it, since the future is always surprising?

One can only write about the unknown part of the Law of tomorrow. If the future is then modeled on what was written, so much the better for the prophet, a tribute that can, for example, be paid to Pierre Godé!footnote-1813 who described in 1999 what was going to be 10 years later "Law of the future" constituted by Environmental Law!footnote-1804. If the future denies the author or if its contours in no way follow the lines of the written word, this is not serious since the writing of the Law, even if it has the specificity of being partly prescriptive in that it has the power to write the future, a normative pen that rounds up letters!footnote-1805, it participates in all writing: above all to be that of a dream.

Lévi-Strauss argued that teaching is defined as dreaming out loud. Teaching and describing the Law of a century that we will never know gives even more freedom to dream about it. This freedom increases when the object is a branch of Law in the process of being born, state of the stammering "Compliance Law" of which some still maintain, as it was made for Regulation Law, that there is not existing. The hand can then, as it pleases, trace its beautiful or hideous features: what face will Compliance Law have, as soon as we assume that it will exist?

It may as well be a nightmare (I) as a happy dream (II).

It is up to us to choose in which category this branch of Law will flourish. Because what we can be sure of is this fulfillment. It is certainly already taking sides to presuppose the very existence of Compliance Law. Not only to consider it possibility with hostility because to be an enemy of something or someone is already to recognize their existence. Before that, two objections radically block the very existence of Compliance Law and their shadow remains in the future of it!footnote-1809.

Firstly, it is said that Compliance does not come under Law, but for example only ethics since it would consist in keeping well in companies which care about the interest of others or the planet, for example by spontaneous care of the environment; Compliance being a crystallization of social responsibility, the one for which we have our conscience, we express our "raison d'être" and we are not accountable!footnote-1807. Or it would consist in technologically putting in place tools for capturing technical information using data storage and processing methods. Compliance is then a sub-category of "Data Regulation"!!footnote-1814, a mechanical concept in which Law is no more present. In these two perspectives, Compliance Law cannot exist, no more tomorrow than it would exist today. These two radical conceptions, completely entrusting Compliance mechanisms to everyone except lawyers, do not make sense because it suffices to note the development of judgments and laws to measure the legal phenomenon already present!footnote-1808.

Second, there would be many Compliance mechanisms but insufficient to constitute a branch of Law. Indeed we would find Compliance in Company Law, Labor Law, Financial Law, Banking Law, Criminal Law, Administrative Law, European Law, International Law, etc.

These classic branches, which have been formed for so long, depending on the point of view adopted, would gain in modernity or be threatened with decay by this kind of extension which will be Compliance. There would thus be as many "little legal sectoral rules" as there are branches of law. These new internal developments would be like a new bud, on which care should be taken - if the tree regains its strength - or a weed to be eradicated - if the French garden loses its perspective.

Thus the matter being scattered as many as specialist lawyers, often criminalists or specialists in banking and Financial Law, then tomorrow all specialists in all branches of Law, this could constitute the most radical obstacle to the constitution of Compliance Law. Indeed, we would come back to confuse Compliance and the "modernization" of Law itself as a whole, since it would only be a question of perfecting each of the classic branches of the legal system.

If we keep in this half-sleep that is any projection in the future the hope of a constituted branch of Law, we must discard these two perspectives of annihilation, either in the total absence of Law or in recovery by all Law. To dismiss the sorrowful spirits who see no future in Compliance and keep only its enemies in the space of this article, let us assume that Compliance Law will exist in the 21st century. In what form and by what means, in the palm of which institutions, in the shadow of which legal system? Since it is a question of projecting ourselves onto the black screen of our nights of dreamy lawyers, let us take the current state only as a trailer. Like the one developed by the genius who by the contempt not only brought down into the flames of hell the cinema which has become a consumer industry with which producers force-feed us but offered us the vision of its future. What is what we see today the trailer? We let our imagination run wild since the trailer films are autonomous works compared to the film which follows them.

We have no idea what will happen and what we are watching from the brief and violent current images of Compliance Law, the cinema of which rather makes a hero of the whistleblower!footnote-1811 and a character of the narrow and ridiculous importance of the compliance officer!footnote-1812, does little to help us. But if we force the features of the present lineaments, the alternative of this Law in childhood is therefore that of a nightmare (I) or an idyllic solution for difficulties that will increase (II).

Everything will depend on the concept that we will retain of Compliance Law. Because the script is not written, because Compliance Law is a Law with a political dimension, that it is defined by the ambitions that we can claim to have by setting monumental goals that we are going to achieve, a claim that will make it one major branch of the Law of tomorrow, or we can abandon any claim, lower our heads and arms, and reject any claim. It is then that the power of Compliance Law, which will be no less great, will turn against us, human beings, as in a nightmare.

Full reference: Salah, M. M., The Legal Framework for New Silk Roads: a Globalized Law at the Service of a Global ambition. When China Discovers the Virtues of Globalization of Law, International Business Law Journal, n°3, 2020, p. 319-351

This article is available for Sciences Po's students via the Drive in the folder MAFR Regulation et Compliance

Full reference: White Paper on Leveling the Playing Field as Regards Foreign Subsidies adopted by European Commission on 17th of June 2020, 49p.

Read the report

► Full Reference: Conseil national des barreaux (CNB) and Centre de recherche et d'étude des avocats (CREA), Guide. L'avocat français et les enquêtes internes (Guide. The French attorney and the internal investigations), June 2020.

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► read the guide (in French)

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Full reference: Fasterling, B., "Criminal Compliance - Les risques d'un droit pénal du risque", Revue internationale de droit économique, 2016/2 (t.XXX), p. 217-237

Read the article.

Full reference : Quéméner, M., Dalle, F. and Wierre, Cl., Quels droits face aux innovations numériques ? Législations, jurisprudences et bonnes pratiques du cyberespecac. Défis et protections face aux dérives du numérique, preface by Agathe Lepage, Gualino-Lextenso, 223 pages, 2020.

Read the back cover.

Read the table of contents.

Read the preface.

Full reference: CA Paris, i7, Iliad, 4th of June 2020, n° 19/11454

Read the judgment (in French)