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Full reference: Finantsinspektsioon, 19th of February 2019, Danske Bank  Read the Finantsinspektsioon's press release In this decision, the Estonian financial monitoring authority forces Danske Bank to stop its activities in Estonia because of breaches to its obligations concerning fight against money laundering. 

Full reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., Creating "Regulation Law" at Dauphine, in Huault, I. and Bouchard, B. (ed.), 50 years of Research in Dauphine. 1968-2019, 2019, pp. 110-114 Read Marie-Anne Frison-Roche's article (in French)   Read also:  The foreword of the book written by Bruno Bouchard (in French) The preface of the book written by Ivar Ekeland (in French) The table of contents of the book (in French)

This working paper has served as a basis for an article subsequently published in French in the Law Journal Recueil Dalloz (see Compliance et personnalité, Recueil Dalloz, 2019). It is enriched with notes, references and links.    Summary: Compliance Law is often presented as empty and a mechanical set of procedures, in which human beings do not matter. It is the opposite. The concern of human beings justifies it fights against the legal technique of the personality. Indeed as Compliance Law is an legal construction around Information and even in its core function of prevention of the systemic risks and its markets protection, the Compliance Law sets the requirement to know "genuinely" the person who is "relevant" – behind the legal person – for the purpose set, for example the fight against corruption or money laundering, establishing in principe what are only exception in Corporate Law or Competition Law. In a more European conception of Compliance Law, as Law of direct protection of human beings beyong legal personnalities, from near the company and even far, humans being the real and effective beneficiaries of the new branch of Law. 

This working document is the basis for a conference held in Nice on February 4, 2020.   Refer to the presentation of the conference, in particular to the slides which are the support of its presentation.   The working document is also the underlying of the article to appear in the book: Compliance Tools..   Summary of the Working Paper. The link between Law and History is so often emphasized, also between Law and Society, but very little between Law and Geography. Braudel does not have enough emulators in the matter. However Pascal affirmed as an observation that the legal rules are not the same below and beyond the Pyrenees. Montesquieu in the new formulation which he proposes of the Theory of climates, gives to the observation of the variety of systems and their correlation with geography a more normative turn. Human beings would be different according to the regions and by the effect of time a difference of nature appears which implies that one should not conceive the same rule according to the zones of the world. Everyone often talk about Montesquieu and affirms the good idea to return to his conception on the art of designing Law. Why not use this specifif theory  in matters of Compliance Law, globally applied since the climates are so different? All the more if we take more literally the reference to "climate", to different climates and we have in mind the now very strong link between Law and environmental policies on the one hand and the tools of Compliance Law on the other hand (like the so-called "green finance").   If we have to do it with caution, we can already do it as an exercise, if only to test the way we design and apply Compliance tools without ever thinking about the differences in latitude, which are neither hot nor cold to artificial intelligences.   It is certainly with great caution that we should move forward but by expressing more consideration for the essential relationships between Law, Compliance and Geography. This consideration must be not just a simple indicator that ultimately comes in the risk mapping and in the programs compliance, If we pay attention, then firstly this avoids two pitfalls (I). The first is to avoid giving all the space to tools that do not integrate this geographic dimension, by reducing what Compliance itself is. This risk of giving too little importance to the geographic dimension in the design and use of Compliance tools (A) can take three forms. Indeed if we reduce Compliance to being only a "procedure" aiming to mechanically ensure the entreprise "conformity" to "regulation" (1), then this literally meaningless definition can apply everywhere and to everyone. But is Compliance Law just that? It is notably to ignore its normative teleological character. The second exclusion from geographic relevance, which similarly signals a poor vision of Compliance, consists in entrusting the entire mechanics of Compliance to platforms and algorithms, by which machines "talk" and would be able to "develop standards" (2) . If Compliance is only data capture, storage and correlation, this is conceivable. But the "ground" where the weak signals are perceived, memorized, where the standards are "internalized, shows that it varies according to the zones. As such, the idea of" regulation by data ", promoted by many regulations and Regulators deserves be more careful because the information does not make the decision by itself, Compliance Law remaining from Ex Ante with humans who decide for the future. Similarly, Compliance Law takes shape in companies, either all (about corruption, worker security), or those of certain sectors (banks for money laundering) or of a certain size (vigilance mechanisms). When it is assumed that the compliance standards, embodied by internal controls, are the same for all of the locations of the so-called "global" company (3), is this not a somewhat outdated vision of the company? While we question the State, because too hierarchical, this is the board of the company which sometimes imposes via its private regulatory power the same standard, fixed on the West …..   But once alerted on this first type of pitfall is to better guard against another type of pitfall. It is the reverse. Indeed, we must be careful not to give too much importance to the geographic dimension in the design and use that we have of Compliance tools (B).  It is not appropriate to draw boundaries between Compliance systems, since Compliance has given rise to a new Law branch, strongly linked to the phenomenon known as "globalization" (1). However, not only can we observe the permanence of these borders, on which international settlement systems run up, but we note that Compliance Law allows the construction of new walls, against which we could do nothing. While there is a war between exported local Compliances, of which that of the United States is the most conspicuous because its voice carries the most, but it is above all a defeat of the Law, but about which we tends to confuse the part and the whole (2).   Once we have tried to regain our senses a little, it could be possible to classify Compliance tools because the Compliance techniques, as soon as we want them substantial, that is to say built on the goals that their power can actually achieve, have an immense field of action which means that we must at the same time identify general but concrete rules. To find the right relationship between Compliance Law and Geography (II), we can propose a triptych. In the first place, there is undoubtedly what concerns technical information and conservation methods, where we can accelerate by passing stages of development and pass directly to detection techniques, without worrying about keeping in the geographic place what appears there before mais is not useful (A). Then by focusing on the normativity of Compliance, that is to say the different goals pursued, it turns out that some are certainly objectively anchored in the geography of an area, which finds particularly its relevance in terms of environment, but have effects that pass the Pyrenees dear to Pascal, which justifies global compliance requirements, as shown in the case of the Amazon, which is a "crucial object" (B).  Even more, if we put some hope in Compliance Law and that the monumental goal pursued by it is of a political nature and not only technical, Compliance being what sustains and not what replaces Politics , it is therefore necessary to assume the Ex Ante Responsibility carried by Compliance through the concept of Vigilance. This is taking place. What is yet to be devised is to improve the very definition of what Compliance Tools are ; for the moment, maybe they are too abrupt, too violent. In this, they must be conceived not as violence – however legitimate they may be, but as a "path", which the texts of energy "transition" show us. The company then becomes the supervisor of others to bring them from one state to another, as we can see about invest banking (C). Law as a "path" and not as a prescription, it is Kanak Law which shows us the example.  Sure that Montesquieu would appreciate it.   

► Référence complète : M.-A. Frison-Roche, "What can Compliance Law build relying on the European Humanist Tradition", Working Paper, January 2019. - This working paper has served as a basis for an article published in French in the collective publication Pour une Europe de la Compliance in the serie Regulation & Compliance. -     Compliance is often presented as a complex, technical, almost incomprehensible set, in that it consists only of empty and moving procedures, mechanical corpus about which the goal would be a question that would not arise. The question of the purpose of these huge compliance devices might not even have to be asked. And this for two reasons. Firstly it would only be a matter of following "processes", that is, mechanical and endless procedures. This conception of compliance is often called "kafkaes". Closer to closer, one thinks first of all of the book written by Kafka's The trial l and Welles' adaptation to the cinema in which the charcters are surrounded by walls that are narrowing around them, but it is rather to his novel In the penal colony that must be thought, that is to say to a procedural system of isolation which we do not understand the foundation, which makes it without foundation and without end but also which takes mainly the form of a machine in which the person is placed and which mechanically writes the Law on and under the skin of his back. This internalization of the rule in the body of the condemned – that the French legal system before the French Revolution associated only with "enormous crimes" – being the ordinary way of actual and ordinary application of the rules can correspond to a certain vision of the Compliance, detached from any purpose. The question of the purpose of Compliance may also not have to arise for a second reason, almost the opposite: they would always be devices that are specific to particular sectors. Thus, the banking sector, the insurance sector, the drug sector, the agri-food sector, the telecommunications sector, the energy sector, etc. Then the opposite happens: too many goals! Since each of these sectors has specificities such that it includes purposes that are specific to each of them. For example continuity for energy, access information for telecommunications, control of systemic risk for banking and finance, protection and secret for private information, etc. Now, either these ends so diverse are indifferent to each other, or they can contradict each other. Therefore, to ask the question of the purpose of compliance mechanisms would be to move to the stitution of not even trying to understand "processes" to be exceeded by too many substantial purposes pursued at the same time and in contradictorily senses … . This is why the question of the purpose of the Compliance is not asked in a main way. Even less if it is superimposed with another goal that is the European construction …. But on the contrary, if we confront this question of the aims of the Compliance Mechanisms by crossing it with another issue, older but also under construction, namely the question of Europe, it is possible to make an alliance of these two difficulties to transform them as an asset. That one can help the other. Indeed, both Europe and Compliance in their current states are two constructs with uncertain goals or behaviors most often only "reactive" (I). If we do not want to mobilize all our strength to limit our weakness, which leads rather to feed it, we can go draw on the unity of this Europe so diverse but which finds it unity in the protection of the human being by the very idea of ​​"person". However, Compliance Law can have the same unity, despite the diversity of sectors, and thus fill the meaning of these multiple procedures, providing the balance between information and secrets, circulation of data and conservation of that they concern, common and dialectic purpose that this European Compliance Law. in the process of being constituted can give the world an example in relying on the European tradition  (II).