Compliance

Compliance. Trust. Two words that come more and more often than before at our readers' eyes or listeners' ears. And yet they do not seem to match well. They even seem to repel each other. Indeed, Compliance is the way in which Public Authorities trust certain private operators, not in themselves, but with their structural capacities to mechanically capture the information that these authorities need (I). This presupposes a vision of the world in which Companies are powerful and powerful alone but are not virtuous, while Public Authorities, such as the Public Prosecutor's Office or Regulators, are weak but virtuous alone. Such a conception of Compliance transforms companies into automata. Such a vision of the world has no future: only human beings can be trusted, whose fallibility must be accepted, as Compliance is then the expression of a relationship built on trust that is to be seen between non-mechanical operators, namely public Institutions and private Operators, who can both have in common concern for an interest which goes beyond them and which was formerly called the general interest (II). From this reality, no new doubt for private companies, but which explains the strange intimacy between the violent Compliance Law and the new spontaneous order of Corporate Social Responsibility, it is up to them to demonstrate this concern Cf others that it shares with the Public Authorities, except to fall in Compliance reduced to costly procedures, empty endless staked out of sanctions without control. It is thus for Companies to make this branch of Compliance Law emerging become what can be the best, when it is possible that it becomes what would be the worst.

► Full reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Le Droit de la compliance" ("Compliance Law"), D.2016, Chron., pp. 1871-1874. - ► English Summary of the article: Constraints weighing on companies in terms of Compliance multiply and get heavier. But the notion is contradictory, uncertain, "strange", the expression of "conformity" being only a transposition in French.  Compliance appears today as the world internalisation of a public regulation, often conceived in the United-States, in firms, transformed in effectivity agents of global monumental goals: competition equity, fight against terrorism or States deemed unworthy (embargos).  Rather than borrowing scattered solutions, it is essential to build a "Compliance Law", properly European, to which everyone will be accountable.This new branch of Law is built teleologically on its Monumental Goals. It is driven by crucial businesses. The Judge is at its centre.   - 📝read the article (in French) -   🚧Read the bilingual Working Paper on the basis of which the article was written.     

This article provides a basis for an article published  in the Recueil Dalloz  in French : "Le droit de la compliance". ‘Compliance’ issues have been increasingly discussed in recent years. Articles, handbooks, soft law, decisions or definition have been written. But nothing really converges. The term ‘conformity’ [conformité in French] is used in parallel, or even instead of the usual concept of compliance. There are as many definitions of what compliance is as there are authors writing on the matter. And yet it is used in manifold ways, from Competition law to International Finance law, from the hardest law (enforced with the help of the most stringent sanctions) to business ethics, according to which behaving should be enough to be compliant. At a time when compliance invades law, it should be first noted that we are too shortsighted to grasp the mechanism (I), whereas it is necessary to build a comprehensive Compliance law (II). Read developments below.

🌐 follow Marie-Anne Frison-Roche on LinkedIn 🌐subscribe to the Newsletter MAFR Regulation, Compliance, Law  - This general bibliography brings together some general references, which overlap or cross over the more specific bibliographies on Compliance, through different subjects or branches of Law, in French Law or in foreign and supra-national Law having a direct influence, so that one can understand what results in nation law. It is composed of doctrinal documents (books and articles), legislative or regulatory texts applicable in France and other countries (and, where applicable, draft laws or regulations), as well as documents of gray literature . It may be relevant to cross this bibliography with the broader Bibliography on the General Regulation Law, or with the more focused Bibliography on the Law of Banking and Financial Regulation.

Complete reference: Aguilar, L., Doing the Right Thing: Compliance That Works for Investors, transcript of a conference by this Commissioner of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) before the Regulatory Compliance Association (ROC), which is a professional association which offers training programs to thousands of people on the subject of 78,000 Compliance. The conference was held in New York, April 18, 2013. Validation of the transcription in 2014. The conference author, SEC Commissioner, refers to Roosevelt's statement that the best thing to do is to do the right thing. In this matter, when things get too complex, compliance is for the company to protect investors.