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► Référence complète : M.-A. Frison-Roche, "La raison d'être est avant tout une notion juridique", entretien in Notariat, La journée de la Raison d'Etre, 

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📝Lire l'entretien 

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📚Lire le numéro complet dans lequel s'insère l'entretien.

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🎥Regarder l'intervention en vidéo de Marie-Anne Frison-Roche à la journée du Conseil Supérieur du Notariat sur la Raison d'être. 

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► Full Reference: Frison-Roche, M.A., Régulation et Compliance, expression des missions d'un Ordre, in📅 Ordre des Géomètres-experts, Une profession face aux défis de la société, Le Havre, September 15, 2022. 

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📅 read the general of the manifestation de la manifestation (in French)

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🎥watch the one-minute video summarizing the twenty-minutes intervention (in French)

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🚧 read English Presentation of the Working Paper which has been the basis of this conference

► English Summary of this intervention: Professional orders should not present themselves as exceptions, however legitimate they may be, in relation to a principle, which would be the competitive system, but as the expression of a principle. This principle is expressed by two branches of Law whose importance is constantly growing in European Law, liberal branches which are based on the conception of economic life and the definition of company, turned towards the future: the Regulatory Law and Compliance Law, two branches of Law both related and distinct.

Indeed, and this is the topic of the first part, Competition Law conceives professional orders as exceptions since these "corporations" constitute structural agreements. French domestic legal system both consolidates the professional orders by backing them up to the State, which would sub-delegate its powers to them, but involves them in the questioning by the European Union of the States and their tools. Most often the temptation is then to recall with a kind of nostalgia the times when the professional orders were the principle but, except to ask for a restoration, the time would be no more.

A more dynamic approach is possible, in accordance with the more general evolution of Economic Law. Indeed, the Professional Order is the expression of a profession, a little-exploited concept in Economic Law, over which the Order exercises the function of "Second-level Regulator", the public authorities exercising the function of "First-level Regulator". The Banking and Financial Regulatory Law is built in this way and operates thank to that, at national, European, and global level. This is what should be linked.

The Professional Orders therefore have the primary function of spreading a "Culture of Compliance" among the professionals they supervise and beyond them (clients and stakeholders). This culture of Compliance is developed regarding the missions which are concretized by the professionals themselves.

Therefore, the second part of the Working Paper deals with the legal evolution of the notion of "Mission" which has become central in Economic and General Law, through the technique of the mission-based company. However, there are multiple points of contact between the raison d'être, the company with a mission and Compliance Law as soon as the latter is defined by the concrete and overly ambitious goals that it pursues. : the Monumental Goals.

Each structure, for example the French Ordre des Géomètres-Experts, is legitimate to set the Monumental Goal that it pursues and that it inculcates, in particular the conception of territory and the living environment, joining what unites all the Monumental Goals of Compliance: concern for others. The French Ordre des Géomètres-Experts, is adequate because it has a more flexible relationship, both tighter and broader, with the territory than the State itself.

By instilling this in professionals, the Professional Order develops in the practitioner an "ex ante responsibility", which is a pillar of Compliance Law, constituting both a charge and a power that the practitioner exercises, and of which the Professional Order must be the supervisor.

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► to go further ⤵️ 

• Frison-Roche, M.-A., 📘Compliance Monumental Goals, 2021
• Frison-Roche, M.-A., 💻Appliquer la notion de "Raison d'être" à la profession du Notariat, 2021

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► Référence complète : M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Europe, Compliance et Professions", intervention devant le bureau du Comité de Liaison des Institutions ordinaires (CLIO), 6 septembre 2022.

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Cette présentation d'une quinzaine de minutes a ensuite donné lieu à un échange avec les membres du Bureau du CLIO. 

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► Résumé de la présentation : La perspective ici proposée est de partir non pas du schéma du marché concurrentiel, repris par le Droit de la concurrence, par rapport auxquels les professions et les ordres ont toujours dès le départ et définitivement statut d'exceptions, mais de partir - dans une vision paradoxalement moins juridique et plus concrète - de l'Europe telle qu'elle s'était construite à la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et qu'elle se construit de nouveau.

I. LE PROJET POLITIQUE DE L'EUROPE : À COTE DE L'EUROPE DE LA CONCURRENCE, L'EUROPE DE LA RÉGULATION

La Régulation n'est en rien l'exception (qui serait en outre logée au niveau des Etats-membre) du Droit de la concurrence (qui serait en outre logée au niveau du Droit de l'Union), la concurrence écrasant doublement la Régulation, en ce qu'elle serait le seul principe (le principe prévalant sur l'exception) et qu'elle serait au-dessus dans la hiérarchie des normes.

Cela n'est pas vrai. 

Il faut donc partir de l'Europe. 

L’Europe est une idée politique, construite avec des moyens juridiques. C'est ainsi que Monnet l'avait conçu et c'est de nouveau que la Commission européenne la conçoit (voir par exemple ce qu'en dit Thierry Breton). 

Au sortir d'une catastrophe, il s'est agi de construire l'Europe, conçue comme  une communauté d’êtres humains (valeurs communes, groupe social fluide).

Pour cela, il fallait trouver les bons instruments juridiques, pour (re)créer ces valeurs communes : faire que les échanges se réalisent avec des règles juridiques "positives" (CECA, collaborations pour faire des rails) et des règles juridiques « négatif » (abattre les frontières ; prohibition des comportements anticoncurrentiels et prohibition des aides d’Etat, prohibition qui n’existe nulle pas ailleurs).

Puis en premier lier la Commission européenne, la Cour de justice, voire les Etats-membres ont « oublié » la construction positive et on n’a gardé que la construction négative : le vide concurrentiel (qui a des mérites, notamment en ce qu'il exprime la liberté), dont tout devait sortir ; en second lieu, on a pris l’instrument pour le but.

C'est ainsi que le Droit de la concurrence, en tant qu'il est une branche du Droit économique, est entièrement guidé par sa finalité, mais il a pour objet la concurrence : la téléologie a pour objet une fin qui ne lui est pas extérieure, c’est une « tautologie ».

L’Europe a changé, par le choc des crises successives depuis 2008, avec la crise financière et bancaire ; depuis 2020 avec la crise sanitaire ; depuis 2022 avec la crise climatique qui s’annonce.

C'est une opportunité (la crise est aussi une opportunité, parce qu'elle prise les idées de départ, fait de la place pour d'autres). 

La téléologie européenne n’est plus tautologie ; la concurrence y retrouve sa place. Le système demeure celui d'une économie libérale mais la DG Concurrence ne résume plus la Commission européenne : l’Europe – y compris la Commission européenne – n’a plus pour seule fin la concurrence. La crise étant un souci majeur, car l'Europe a compris qu'elle était mortelle, le Droit a pour finalité de permettre à l'Europe de survivre (notamment face à la Chine :  elle a pour fin d’être « durable » : de ne pas disparaître.

Cela a pris notamment forme dans l'Union bancaire, qui a pour but simple d'exclure la disparition de l'Europe.

Mais cela vaut aussi pour l'Europe de la communication des personnes et des biens. Voir par exemple la proposition le 7 juillet 2022 d’aides d’Etat sur les transports pour faire une Europe des transports avec des infrastructures publiques.

Voir aussi la naissance de la « gouvernance-énergie », signant la fin de la suprématie l’esprit de la directive de 2016 sur « l’ouverture à la concurrence » comme seul principe, nouant l'énergie et l'environnement, prolongeant la Régulation par la Supervision, c'est-à-dire avant tout l'Industrie. Or, dans une perspective à ce point concrète, là où il y a de l'industrie il y a des personnes ayant des savoirs-faire : des professionnels. 

La crise de 2020 accélère la naissance de l’Europe de la Santé ; à partir du vaccin.

La DG Connect exprime volonté de construire un écosystème numérique européen : Europe des données, à la fois marchand, industriel et protecteur des personnes (Digital Markets Act ; Digital Services Act ; Governance Data Act ; Chip Act), initialement construit par le Juge européen (jugement de la CJUE Google Spain 2014).

Dans chaque perspective, il y a la fixation par les Autorités politiques européenne d'un « but monumental », à la fois propre à un secteur mais aussi commun à tous, et tous se regroupent autour d’une volonté proprement européenne : la protection des êtres humains.

L'Avenir de l'Europe est ainsi dans l'émergence de l'Europe de la Régulation. 

La question qui se pose alors est : comment atteindre ces Buts ainsi politiquement posés ? 

Car la distance est grande entre la volonté exprimée et la concrétisation de ces buts (affaire de "plan" et de "transition").

II. POUR CONSTRUIRE L'EUROPE SOUVERAINE : l'ACTION DES PROFESSIONS, ENTITÉS EN POSITION D'ATTEINDRE LES BUTS MONUMENTAUX 

L’Europe de la Régulation, ainsi constituée, est, surtout avec l'enjeu des données (économie de l'information, industrie des données, souveraineté européenne), entre les mains des entreprises et de l'industrie, laquelle ne se pense pas en-dehors des professionnels.

La CJUE appuie le mouvement.

Mais comment la mettre en œuvre :

Le politique (la Commission européenne, les gouvernements nationaux, etc.) va rechercher des alliances, le Droit de la Compliance prolongeant le Droit de la Régulation et mettant en alliance les Autorités publiques (dont l'État n'est qu'un exemple) et les "entités en position de le faire".

Pour les institutions européennes, ces "entités en position d'agir" sont :

• :
  • Les Etats membres
  • Les entreprises cruciales, les entreprises publiques,
  • Les ordres correspondent à cette définition

L'Europe se construit ainsi actuellement et à l’avenir sur deux piliers :  Concurrence d’une part et Régulation et Compliance d’autre part. 

• Ne pas se penser comme une exception (même légitime) au principe de concurrence
• Se penser comme un opérateur crucial contribuant à l'expression du second pilier de la construction européenne
• Donner à voir sa contribution structurelle à la construction de l’Europe, telle qu’elle se dessine
• Proposer son aide dans ce sens

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► pour aller plus loin ⤵️ 

• M.-A. Frison-Roche, 🎤 Régulation et Compliance, expression des missions d'un Ordre, 2022
• M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📕Les buts monumentaux de la Compliance,2022 
• M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📕Les outils de la Compliance, 2021
• M.-A. Frison-Roche, 💻Appliquer la notion de "Raison d'être" à la profession du Notariat, 2021
• M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📕Avocats et Ordres au 21ième siècle, 2017
• M.-A. Frison-Roche, 📝Déontologie et discipline des professions libérales, 1998

🌐 follow Marie-Anne Frison-Roche on LinkedIn

🌐 subscribe to the Newsletter MAFR Regulation, Compliance, Law 

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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, Compliance contract, compliance clauses, working paper, September 2022.

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►Summary of this working paper:  Compliance Law has multiplied obligations. However, although Tort Law is emerging in Compliance issues and contracts are multiplying in practice, for the moment the relationship between Compliance Law and Contract Law is not very visible (I).

However, there are contracts whose sole purpose is to give concrete form to Compliance, which creates a specific contract and must influence its implementation (II). Moreover, there is much to learn from the diversity of compliance stipulations scattered throughout a wide range of contracts (III).

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🔓read the developments below⤵️

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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Le principe de proximité systémique active, corolaire du renouvellement du principe de souveraineté par le Droit de la Compliance" ("The principle of active systemic proximity: corollary of the renewal of the principle of sovereignty by Compliance Law"), in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Les Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance, coll. "Régulations & Compliance", Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Dalloz, 2022, p. 501-520.

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📝read the article (in French)

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🚧read the bilingual Working Paper which is the basis of this article, with additional developments, technical references and hyperlinks

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📕read a general presentation of the book, Les Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance, in which this article is published

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► Summary of the article (done by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance): Surprisingly, it is often in a quarrelsome, angry, dissatisfied tone that we first speak of Compliance, especially when Compliance takes a legal form, because it is then we talk about sanctions coming from afar. These sanctions would strike both extremely hard and in an illegitimate way, Law only therefore takes its part in Compliance to increase its brutality: the Law is what would prolong the war between States to better hit this kind of civilian population that would be the companies..., in a new kind of "planetary total war"...

Why so much detestation, which can only be generated by such a presentation?

Because, thanks to the power of Law, Compliance would therefore be the means for a State, finally found, to meddle in the affairs of others to serve its own interests, including those of its companies, to go to war against other States and to the companies they care about without even having to formally declare the war to them. Compliance Law would finally allow a State that is not even a strategist, just smarter, to leave its territory to regulate others. It is true that it seems even more exasperating that it would also be under the guise of virtue and good purposes. Thus, it is not possible to count the number of the writings that describe and comment on the occurrences of the expression "Trojan horse", "economic war", etc. There are thus more articles on this subject of Compliance Law as a means of going to dictate to subjects of law who are nevertheless subject to other legal systems their behavior and to sanction them for having failed to do so, than on all other technical Compliance matters.

As soon as the term "extraterritoriality" is dropped, the knives are drawn. The dejection of defeat... because who can fight against American power, American Law seducing everyone? The call for resistance, or at the very least for "reaction"... In any case, it would be necessary to put the analysis back on its true terrain: politics, conquest, war, so leaving the legal technique there, area which would be good for the naive and above all count the divisions amassed on each side of the borders, then note that only the United States would have had the ingenuity to count many of them, with their armada of judges, prosecutors and lawyers, with Compliance Law amassed like so many gold coins since the 1930s, American companies relaying the assault by internalizing Compliance Law through internal codes, law that is "soft" only in name, and community standards governing the planet according to American principles, the solution then consisting of line up as many of them as possible in reaction, then attempt to "block" the assault. Because if there is no Global Law, Compliance Law would have succeeded in globalizing American Law.

The technique of blocking laws would therefore be the happy outcome on which the forces should concentrate to restore "sovereignty", since Europe had been invaded, by surprise by some famous texts (FCPA) and some cases whose evocation (BNP case) to the French ear sounds like a Waterloo. Compliance Law would therefore only be a morne plaine...

But is this how we should understand the notion of Sovereignty? Has the so-called question of "the extraterritoriality of Compliance Law" not been totally biased by the question, certainly important but with both very precise and extremely specific outlines, of embargoes which have almost not related to Compliance Law?

The first thing to do is therefore to see more clearly in this kind of fight of extraterritoriality, by isolating the question of embargoes from other objects which should not be assessed in the same way (I).

This done, it appears that where Compliance Law is required, it must be effectively indifferent to the territory: because Compliance Law intervenes where the territory, in the very concrete sense of the land in which we are anchor is not present in the situation to be governed, situation to which our minds have so much difficulty adapting and which, however, is now the most common situation: finance, space, digital. If we want the idea of ​​civilization to remain there, that the notion of "limit" be central there. However, Sovereignty is not linked to omnipotence, it is the grandchildren who believe that, it is on the contrary linked to the notion of limits (II).

But if the limit had been naturally given to human beings by the territory, the ground on which we walk and the border on which we stumble and which protects us from aggression, if the limit had been naturally given to human beings by death and the oblivion into which our body and our imagination eventually fall. Indeed, technology erases both natural limits. The Law was the very reflection of these limits, since it was built on the idea of ​​life and death, with this idea that, for example, we could no longer continue to live after our death. Digital technology could challenge this. In the same way, Law had in the same "natural" way reflected the terrestrial borders, since Public International Law being internal Public Law, took care that each sovereign subject remained in its terrestrial borders and did not go beyond, without the agreement of others, Public International Law organizing both the friendly reception of the other, by treaties and diplomacy, as well as unfriendly entry, by the Law of War, while  Private International Law welcomes foreign legal systems if a extraterritorial element is already present in the situation.

The complexity of the rules and the subtlety of the solutions do not modify the solidity of this base, always linking the Law to the material reality of this world which are our bodies, which appear and disappear and our "being" with them, and the earth squared by borders. Borders have always been crossed, International Commercial Law being only an economic and financial translation of this natural taste for travel which does not question the territory, human beings passing from one to another.

But the Global has arrived, not only in its opportunities, being not an issue because one can always give up the best, but also in global risks whose birth, development and result are not mastered and of which it is not relevant to thinking only of repairing the damage, because preventing risks from degenerating into a systemic catastrophe is what is at stake today. What if territory slips away and hubris seizes human beings who claim that technology could be the new wings leading a fortunate few to the sun of immortality? We could go towards a world that is both catastrophic and limitless, two qualifiers that classical philosophers considered identical.

Law being what brings measure, therefore limits in a world which, through technology, promises to some the deliverance of all these "natural" limits, could, by the new branch of Compliance Law, again inserting limits to a world which, without this contribution, would become disproportionate, some being able to dispose of others without any limit: in doing so, Compliance Law would then become an instrument of Sovereignty, in that it could impose limits, not by powerlessness but on the contrary by the force of Law. This explains why Compliance is so expressly linked to the political project of "Digital Sovereignty".

To renew this relationship between Law and Sovereignty, where the State takes a new place, we must think of new principles. A new principle is proposed here: the Principle of "Proximity", which must be inserted into the Ex-Ante and systemic Law that is Compliance Law. Thus inserted, the Principle of Proximity can be defined in a negative way, without resorting to the notion of territory, and in a positive way, to posit as being "close" what is close systemically, in the present and in the future, Compliance Law being a branch of Systemic Law having as its object the Future.

Thus, thinking in terms of Proximity consists of conceiving this notion as a Systemic Principle, which then renews the notion of Sovereignty and founds the action of entities in a position to act: Companies (III).

If we think of proximity not in a territorial way, the territory having a strong political dimension but not a systemic dimension, but if we think of systemic proximity in a concrete way through the direct effects of an object whose situation immediately impacts ours (as in the climatic space, or in the digital space), then the notion of territory is no longer primary, and we can do without it.

If the idea of ​​Humanism should finally have some reality, in the same way that a company donneuse d'ordre ("order giver") has a duty of Compliance regarding who works for it, this again meets the definition of Compliance Law as the protector of human beings who are close because they are internalized in the object consumers take. It is this legal technique that allows the transmission, with the thing sold, of the procedural right of action for contractual liability.

Therefore, a Principle of Active Systemic Proximity justifies the action of companies to intervene, in the same way that public authorities are then legitimate to supervise them in the indifference of the formal legal connection, principe of indifference already functioning in the digital space and in environmental and humanist vigilance.

It is therefore appropriate to no longer be hampered by what is a bad quarrel of the extraterritoriality of Compliance Law (I), to show the consubstantial Indifference to the territory of this new branch of Law (II) and to propose the formulation of a new Principle: the "Principle of Active Systemic Proximity (III).

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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Place et rôle des entreprises dans la création et l'effectivité du Droit de la Compliance en cas de crise" ("Place and rôle of Companies in the Creation and Effectiveness of Compliance Law in Crisis"), in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Les Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance, coll. "Régulations & Compliance", Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Dalloz, 2022, p. 339-352.

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📝read the article (in French)   

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🚧read the bilingual Working Paper which is the basis of this article, with additional developments, technical references, and hyperlinks

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📕read a general presentation of the book, Les Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance, in which this article is published

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► Summary of the article (done by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance): This article has a very topic: the place of private Companies, regarding the chapter's issue: "the ordeal of a crisis". The crisis constitutes a "test" it brings evidence. Let us take it as such.

Indeed, during the health crisis, Companies have helped the Public Authorities to resist the shock, to endure and to get out of the Crisis. They did so by force, but they also took initiatives in this direction. From this too, we must learn lessons for the next crisis that will come. It is possible that this has already started in the form of another global and systemic crisis: the environmental crisis. In view of what we have been able to observe and the evolution of the Law, of the standards adopted by the Authorities but also by the new case law, what can we expect from Companies in the face of this next Crisis, willingly and strength?

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► Full Reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Appréciation du lancement d'alerte et de l'obligation de vigilance au regard de la compétitivité internationale" ("Assessment of whistleblowing and of the obligation of vigilance with regard to international competitiveness"), in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Les Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance, coll. "Régulations & Compliance", Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Dalloz, 2022, p. 413-436.

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📝read the article (in French)

____

🚧read the bilingual Working Paper which is the basis of this article, with additional developments, technical references and hyperlinks

____

📕read a general presentation of the book, Les Buts Monumentaux de la Compliance, in which this article is published

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► English summary of the article (done by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance): Taking up the legal tools of Compliance and confronting them with the concern that Law must have for the Competitiveness of companies, it is necessary that these legal instruments not harm it because Compliance Law, because of its immense ambitions, can only function through an alliance between political wills with great pretensions (save the planet) and the entities which are able to achieve these goals (the crucial economic operators : the political drawing on the compagnies" power, it would be contradictory for the legal instruments put in place by Law to harm the ability of companies to face global economic competition, or worse to favor international competitors acting under legal systems which do not integrate Compliance obligations.  

From this principle, it is possible to assess these two legal techniques of whistleblowing and vigilance obligation: both consist in capturing Information, which gives them a strong uniqueness and fits them into the global competition for Information.

Taking the whistleblowing, its first beneficiary is the company itself since the firm discovers a weakness and can therefore remedy it. Therefore, beyond the principle of protection of the whistleblower by their access to the legal statute, for instance the one conceived by the French 2016 law known as "Sapin 2", it is questionable that all the incentives are not put in place so that the holder of such information transmits it to the manager. It is not the European solution, even after the European Directive of 2019, national legal systems continuing to require the absence of financial compensation, the "heroic figure of the whistleblower and the refusal of their remuneration depriving the company of Information and improvement. First to the manager, with external transmission taking place if the latter does nothing, the internal manager is thus encouraged to act and put an end to the dysfunction, which increases the competitiveness of the company.

But the French legislation has on the contrary developed the right incentive as to the person to whom the information is transmitted because by obliging to transmit first to the manager, the external transmission intervening if the internal management does nothing, the incentive is thus made to the internal manager to act and put an end to the dysfunction, this legal solution increasing the competitiveness of the company.

Even more, and even if it seems counter-intuitive, the obligation of vigilance increases the competitiveness of the obliged companies. Indeed, Law by obliging them to prevent and fight against violations of human rights and the environment has tacitly given them all the necessary powers to do so, notably the power to collect Information on third-party companies, including (and even above all) those which are not subject to transparency obligations. In this respect, companies, as far as they are personally responsible, hold supervisory power over others, a power which allows to globalize Compliance Law and which, in the process, increases the Companies' own power. Therefore, the obligation of vigilance is in many respects a boon for the companies which are subject to it. The resumption of the mechanism by the next European Directive, itself indifferent to the territory, will only strengthen this global power of vigilant companies over possibly foreign companies which become its passive subjects.

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