► Full reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, “What the Legislator can, or cannot, do: the example of the French judicial public interest agreement (Convention judiciaire d’intérêt public – CJIP)”, Newsletter MAFR. Law, Compliance, Regulation, 27 October 2026.
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In the French legal system, the CJIP (convention judiciaire d’intĂ©rĂŞt public), which is the Judicial Public Interest Agreement, is a mechanism of criminal procedure. It allows the public prosecutor to offer a company, suspected of certain serious economic offences, originally corruption, influence peddling and the laundering of tax fraud, an agreement instead of a criminal trial. The company pays a public interest fine, commits to implementing a Compliance programme under the supervision of the French Anti-Corruption Agency (AFA) for up to three years, and compensates the victims. The agreement must be validated by a judge in a public hearing; it does not amount to a conviction.
This CJIP was created in 2016 by the so-called « Sapin 2 » Act, which reformed French anti-corruption law. It was largely inspired by the American Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA), and also by the British DPA introduced in 2014, but it remains a typically French instrument, embedded in a system in which the public prosecutor (parquet) belongs to the judiciary and in which negotiated justice long seemed foreign to the legal culture. Ten years on, CJIPs have been concluded with many companies, including very large French and foreign groups.
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See also, on the mafr website, the summary of my contribution to the round table devoted to the CJIP, which dealt, on the one hand, with the offences that may give rise to a CJIP and, on the other hand, with the persons who may take part in the CJIP process.
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At the initiative and under the direction of Raphaël Gauvain, former member of the French Parliament and author of a 2019 parliamentary report on the extraterritorial reach of foreign laws, a colloquium was held at the French National Assembly (Assemblée Nationale) to mark the tenth anniversary of the Sapin 2 Act of 9 December 2016. It was remarkable, not only because everything was examined, but also because every point of view could be expressed.
Companies, associations, political figures, the French Anti-Corruption Agency (Agence française anticorruption – AFA), lawyers, etc. The discussions were as learned as they were lively, for the positions of the various participants were not the same. Beneath the technical discussions on Compliance Law, because these are questions of society: the punishment and prevention of corruption, the new role of companies, the new powers of public prosecutors, relations with foreign authorities and, through them, with other legal systems, starting with the American ones, the conceptions and expectations cannot be the same. And yet we must join forces to move towards this great ambition, this Monumental Goal, that is the eradication of corruption from our economic and social systems.
Thank you for organising a day on which everyone, though differently placed, was able to talk to one another. We look forward to the proceedings, for proposals were made to the Legislator during the debates, to improve this, to go back on that.
Precisely, in these matters of Compliance, what falls within the remit of statute law? Assuming that the members of the Assemblée Nationale and of the Sénat, who embody the Legislator, find the time and the calm to do so, what should the Law take up? This question concerns any Legislator in any country.
Because what should the Legislator not take up, since a Compliance culture is not obtained from texts alone: the actors have a role to play, which statutes and decrees do not write.
The Legislator knows this too. The great French jurist Jean Carbonnier said it so well in his Essai sur les lois (« Essay on Laws »), he who also drafted major reforms of French family law that have lasted for decades.
Let us take the example of the CJIP, on which everyone brought their reflections,
🪑🪑🪑 Around the round table « The future of negotiated justice: should the judicial public interest agreement (CJIP) be consolidated and extended? », chaired by Sandrine Mazetier, former member of the National Assembly, with JĂ©rĂ´me Simon, First Deputy Prosecutor at the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF, the specialised prosecution office in charge of serious financial crime), CĂ©line Haye-Kiousis, President of the French National Association of Bank Lawyers (ANJB), Astrid Mignon Colombet, partner at the law firm August Debouzy, Jean-Philippe Foegle, litigation and advocacy officer at Sherpa, a French NGO fighting economic crime, and Alexis Werl, partner at the law firm Ashurst and member of the French National Bar Council (Conseil National des Barreaux – CNB).
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I. IMPROVING THE STATUTES ON THE CJIP… UP TO A POSSIBLE GREAT LEAP
A. TECHNICAL IMPROVEMENT
Since only the example of the CJIP is taken here: once it had been launched by the Sapin 2 Act in 2016 into the French legal system – which was stunned by it, so foreign did this transaction between a prosecutor and a company seem to it – two further statutes opened the CJIP to other offences.
In 2018, because the 2016 Act provided for its use for corruption, influence peddling but also the laundering of the proceeds of tax fraud (which was the subject of the first CJIP, with HSBC Private Bank, validated on 14 November 2017), an Act of 23 October 2018 extended the CJIP to tax fraud itself. Logical. In 2020, because the systemic effectiveness of Compliance programmes in environmental matters was becoming apparent, the Act of 24 December 2020 – the same Act that organised the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in French law – created an environmental CJIP. Logical. One could go on like this, for this or for that, since requiring Compliance programmes for offences with systemic effects is justified in many other cases.
Were it to intervene again, the Legislator could restore order. The CJIP of the 2016 Act falls within the jurisdiction of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (Parquet national financier – PNF) – although the ordinary Paris Prosecutor’s Office was the one to conclude the CJIP with LVMH, validated on 17 December 2021 – whereas the PNF has no jurisdiction over the environmental CJIP of the 2020 Act, which any local public prosecutor may conclude.
The Law could restore order in all this.
All the more so since, moving from jurisdiction to subject matter, local prosecutors have stretched the scope of the CJIP by relying on offences « connected » to those for which it is available. Thus the Épinal Prosecutor’s Office based the CJIP with NestlĂ© Waters of 10 September 2024, concerning the treatment of mineral waters, mainly on consumer protection, which opens a vast field, while the PNF, in the CJIP with Paprec of 11 February 2025, also covered unlawful cartels, which opens the door to competition law. It is true that corruption often goes hand in hand with a cartel or an abuse of dominance.
In any event, it is for the Legislator to set the subject matters and the jurisdictions.
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B. OPENING THE CJIP TO ALL ECONOMIC OFFENCES?
But one could just as well say that, if the CJIP mechanism is beneficial, and the Legislator must think so, since it has said so three times, it could be extended to stock-market and financial offences, systemic offences for which Compliance programmes are welcome.
Since we are witnessing a return of Criminal Law into Economic Law, if the Legislator goes down this path, it could in a general way give public prosecutors the possibility of using this tool of prosecution that the CJIP has become.
It is true that the number of offences in French Economic Law is estimated at 10,000… and that the category itself is uncertain. But one could either proceed as in environmental matters, that is to say branch of law by branch of law, or take a leap and say more simply that the CJIP, now a well-mastered method of prosecution, is available for any offence.
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II. LETTING THE COMPLIANCE CULTURE SPREAD BEYOND REGULATIONS
A. RULES THAT ARE KNOWN, UNDERSTOOD, RESPECTED
But the way in which CJIPs unfold, like the way in which Compliance Law is deployed (whistleblowing, internal investigations, knowledge of the rules, effective use of the mechanisms available), is certainly a matter of statutes and regulations: it is also a matter of culture.
This is why further regulating the course of CJIP negotiations, like that of internal investigations, would destroy an essential advantage: adaptation to each situation.
The presence of a lawyer in the various processes, trust between the protagonists and in the rules themselves, everyone’s adherence to the idea that it is the Law that sets the rules of governance and not mere relations of power and interest, concern for others: the Legislator may write as many lines as it wishes, like a schoolboy given lines as a punishment, this is an element of culture that it cannot impose.
As stressed by the report, published by the French branch of the European Association for Banking and Financial Law (AEDBF): fewer rules, and rules that are known, understood and respected – three requirements that the Legislator itself must regard as part of its own task.
Even if the Legislator does not have to apply itself its statutes, it is for it to know them (nobody knows all the statutes and regulations on Compliance….) and to make them understood (nobody understands them….). This is what will make it possible to have them respected: how can one respect texts that one does not know, or does not understand?
B. LAYING DOWN THE TELEOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES, LETTING THE ACTORS ACT
The Legislator must say what it wants, since it expresses – and must do so more than ever – the General Will, to use the words of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789.
So, what does the French Legislator want with the CJIP?
As we know, the American DPA was born from prosecutors’ practice, whereas the Canadian Legislator, when it created the remediation agreement in 2018, wrote its purposes into the statute itself (section 715.31 of the Canadian Criminal Code). The French Legislator wants the uncertain, interminable and costly criminal proceedings to be avoided. It wants companies to make compliance programs, to commit to a precise and monitored programme so that in the future they not only do not reoffend but improve the system they had damaged.
These purposes constitute the « teleological principles » that justify the CJIP. If these two principles are not disregarded in practice, then the will of the Legislator must be regarded as satisfied.
The more the various actors, all those, so diverse, who spoke during this colloquium, are able to act to develop this culture, rather than to comply mechanically with a mass of regulations, the more Compliance Law, of which the CJIP is only one example, will be a concrete success, notably for the human beings involved.
To go further
► 🎬 Extending the scope of the CJIP through « connected » offences: the CJIP with Nestlé Waters of 2 September 2024 (Surplomb video, in French, 11 October 2024)
► 📕 M.-A. Frison-Roche and M. Boissavy (eds.), Compliance et droits de la défense. Enquête interne – CJIP – CRPC (« Compliance and the rights of the defence. Internal investigation – CJIP – CRPC », in French; the CRPC is the French guilty-plea procedure): the main lines of the book
â–ş The report on Compliance Law submitted to the French Minister of Justice, 2026 (in French)
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