This working paper served as a basis for a conference done in French for the Centre de droit comparé (Center for Comparative Law) in Paris on 23 November 2018.

Updated, it has served as a basis for an article published in French in a book of the Société de Législation comparé (Society of Comparative Legislation).

________

"The whistleblowers". This is a new expression. Which wins a full success. Barely heard once, we hear it everywhere ...

A theme not only of academic teaching, but rather a topic of daily conversation. Because it is every day that we speak about it, in terms more or less graceful. For example President Donald Trump on October 1, 2019 told the press he "wants to interrogate" the whistleblower who would have unlawfully denounced him and would not have, according to him, the right to conceal his own identity, evidence in this according Donald Trump of the false character of his assertions against him, while his lawyer indicates on October 6, 2019 that he does not speak on behalf of a single whistleblower thus taken apart but of a plurality people who gave information against the President of the United States. Even the most imaginative scriptwriters would not have written twists as abruptly or so fast. Spectators, we wait for the next episode, secretly hoping for climbs and slashs.

Precisely if we go to the cinema, it is still a whistleblower whose dedication and success, or even drama, we are told, for the benefit of the global society, and especially of Democracy, since the secrets are fought for the benefit of the truth. Thus, the movie The Secret Man designates Mark Felt as the first whistleblower. Returning to what is often presented as a more "serious" media, for example in France the radio "France Culture" we can learn the story of a historian who worked as an archivist on events that the political power would have wanted to keep hidden by possibly destroying their traces but that his profession led to preserve!footnote-1391: here it is expressly presented to the studious listeners as a "whistleblower" ... While the same radio is trying to find the one that could be, as in a kind of contest, the "first whistleblowers"!footnote-1727?. This rewriting of History can be made because finally Voltaire for Calas, or Zola for Dreyfus did they anything else? 

It is also a topic of legislative debate since in the United States the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 inserted in the 1934 law that established the Securities & Exchanges Commission (SEC) a complete system for retribution and remuneration of whistleblowers, while after elaborating guidelines about about in 2012!footnote-1698, the European Commission has published the text on November 20, 2018 in order to give the character a unified European status, in the device gradually developed to protect the one that was presented in 2018 as who  like that : ""The new whistleblowers' protection rules will be a game changer. In the globalised world where the temptation to maximise profit sometimes at the expense of the law is real we need to support people who are ready to take the risk to uncover serious violations of EU law. We owe it to the honest people of Europe.". Step for the Directive of October 7, 2019. 

In Europe, the Directive first approved by a Resolution of the European Parliament on 16 April 2019 on protection of persons reporting breaches of Union law and then adopted on 7 October 2019 (Directive 2019/78 (EU) of the European Parliament European Union and the Council of the European Union on the Protection of Persons Reporting Breaches of Union law, will have to be transposed in the next two years to the legal systems of the Member States. is not general, since only "violations of European Union Law" are targeted but the character of the "whistleblower" is more generally referred to: it is "whole"!footnote-1699.

In short, the whistleblower is a star !footnote-1390. A kind of historical character, covered with blows and glory, going from Voltaire to Snowden, one as the other being incarnated on the screens!footnote-1681 ....

Recognized by national legislations, which associate to him a legal regime of protection to such a point that, like a tunic of Nessus, it is this legal regime which will define his character and not the opposite. When we read the French law of December 9, 2016 relative à la transparence à la lutte contre la corruption et à la modernisation de la vie économique (on transparency in the fight against corruption and the modernization of economic life), usually known as "Sapin 2 Act", we note that the lawmaker makes much of this character, because he devotes to him the chapter II: "De la protection des!footnote-1682 lanceurs d'alerte" ("The protection of!footnote-1682 whistle-blowers") and that it is by his very protection that the French Parliament formally opens the door of Law to him and throws it openly.

But why a plural? Certainly when we read the recitals of the European Directive of 7 October 2019 on the protection of whistleblowers!footnote-1702, this is only an enumeration of all the subjects about which it is a good idea to to protect them, which encourages us to see in this plural only the index of this non-exhaustive list of topics about which it is good that we are alerted, sign of the lack of definition ... Reading the French law known as "Sapin 2" makes us less severe but more perplex. Indeed, from this plurality covered by the title of the chapter devoted to Les lanceurs d'alerte ("The whistleblowers"), there is no longer any question in the rest of the law, in the very definition that follows, Article 6 which opens this chapter devoted the "whistleblowers" offering the player immediately a singular since it begins as follows:  "Un!footnote-1684 lanceur d'alerte est une personne ..." (A! footnote-1684 whistleblower is a person ..."). No more mention of diversity. The art of legislative writing would have even required that the qualifying article should not be singular but not yet indefinite. 

Thus seem to contradict in this law "Sapin 2" itself the very title which presents the character, in that it uses a definite plural ("the whistleblowers") while the article of definition which presents the topic does it by using the singular indefinite : "a whistleblower....".

This is a first reason to move forward only in a very cautious way, in this "step by step" that constitutes a word-by-word reading: a gloss. This method consists in taking literally the expression itself. The second reason for this technical choice is that the gloss is well suited to an introduction of a collective work, allowing more specific developments to take place in other contributions, for example on the techniques, the difficulties and the limits of this protection, or the history of it, or the reasons for the arrival in French law of these American or Brithish whistleblowers and the way they develop, or not, in other legal systems or other countries.

I will therefore content myself with taking again literally this already legal expression: The (I) launchers (II) of alert (III).

See below developments.

The European Banking Union is based on supervision as much as on regulation: it concerns the operators as much as the structures of the sector, because the operators "hold" the sector.

This is why the "regulator - supervisor" holds the operators by the supervision and is close to them.

He meets them officially and in "soft law" relations. This is all the more necessary since the distinction between the Ex Ante and the Ex Post must be nuanced, in that its application is too rigid, in that it involves a long time (first of all the rules, then to apply them, then to notice a gap between rules and behaviors, then to repair it) is not appropriate if the system aims at the prevention of systemic crises, whose source is inside the operators.

This is why the body in charge of solving the difficulties of the systemic banks for the salvation of the systeme meets the banking sector itself, to ensure that they are permanently "resolvable", so that the hypothesis of their resolution never arises. This is the challenge of this system: that it is always ready, for never be applying.

____

In the European Banking Union, the Single Resolution Board (SRB) is in charge of "resolve" the difficulties of European systemic banks in difficulty. It is the public body of the second pillar of the Banking Union. The first pillar is the prevention of these difficulties and the third is the guarantee of deposits. The resolution is therefore more like an Ex Post mechanism.

But in this continuum through these three pillars between the Ex Ante and the Ex Post, the SRB does not wait passively - as would a traditional judge do - that the file of the troubled bank reaches it. Like a supervisor - which brings it closer to the first public in the system (Single Supervisory Board -SSB), which supervises all the banks, it is in direct contact with all the banks, and it approaches the hypothesis of a bank in trouble by a systemic perspective: it is therefore to the entire banking system that the SRB addresses itself.

As such, it organizes meetings, where he is located: in Brussels.

Thus, on June 18, 2019, all banks came to discuss with the Single Resolution Board to know what it wants from the banks and for the banks, in what is called a "dialogue meeting".

To resolve in Ex Post the difficulties of a bank, it has to present a quality (a little known concept in Bankruptcy Law): "resolvability". How build it? Who build it ? In its very design and in its application, bank by bank.

For the resolution body vis-à-vis all players in the banking and financial sector, it's clear: "Working together" is crucial in building resolvability ".

In the projection that is made, it is affirmed that there can be a successful resolution only if the operator in difficulty is not deprived of access to what makes to stay it alive, that is to say the banking and financial system itself, and more specifically the "Financial Market Infrastructures", for example payment services.

Does the Single Resolution Board expect spontaneous commitments from the FMIs for such a "right of access"? In this case, as the Single Resolution Board says, this right of access corresponds to "critical functions" for a bank, the resolution situation can not justify the closure of the service.

By nature, these crucial operators are entities that report to regulators who oversee them. Who enforces - and immediately - this right of access? When one can think that it is everyone, it risks being nobody .... That is why the resolution body, relaying in this a concern of the Financial Stability Board, underlines that it is necessary to articulate the supervisors, regulators and "resolvers" between them.

_____

To read this program, since it is a proposed program of work for the banking sector, four observations can be made:

1. We are moving more and more towards a general "intermaillage" (which will perhaps replace the absence of a global State, but it is an similar nature because it is always to public authorities that it refers and not to self-regulation);

2. But as there is no political authority to keep these guardians, the entities that articulate all these various public structures, with different functions, located in different countries, acting according to different temporalities, these are the companies themselves that internalize the concern that animates those who built the system: here the prevention of systemic risk. This is the definition of Compliance, which brings back to companies, here more clearly those those which manage the Market Infrastructures, the obligations of Compliance (here the management of systemic risk through the obligation of giving access).

3. Even without a  single systemic guard, there is always a recourse. That will be the judge. There are already many, there will probably be more in a system of this type, more and more complex, the articulation of disputes is sometimes called "dialogue". And it is undoubtedly "decisions of principle" that will set the principles common to all of these particular organisms.

4. We then see the emergence of Ex Ante mechanisms for the solidity of the systems, and the solidity of the players in the systems, and then the Ex Post resolution of the difficulties of the actors according to access to the solidity of the infrastructures of these systems, which ultimately depend on judges (throughout the West) facing areas where all of this depends much less on the judge: the rest of the world.

____

♾️ suivre Marie-Anne Frison-Roche sur LinkedIn

♾️ s'abonner à la Newsletter MAFR Regulation, Compliance, Law 

____

► Référence complète : M.-A. Frison-Roche, "Compliance : avant, maintenant, après", in N. Borga, J. -Cl. Marin et J.-Ch. Roda, J.-Cl. (dir.), Compliance : l'entreprise, le régulateur et le juge, Série Régulations & Compliance, Dalloz, 2018, p. 23-36. 

____

📝 Lire l'article 

____

🚧 Lire le document de travail sur la base duquel s'appuie l'article 

🚧 Read the working paper on which the article is based : Compliance : Before, Now, After. 

____

📝Lire l'autre article publié par Marie-Anne Frison-Roche dans cet ouvrage : Entreprise, Régulateur, Juge : penser la compliance par ces trois personnages. 

______

► Résumé de l'article : Autant l'admettre. Parce que devant des règles de "Compliance si nombreuses et si disparates l'on a tant de mal à s'y retrouver, l'on est contraint à partir dans des directions si changeantes, que nous nous consolons de leur poids, de leur coût et de l'incompréhension que nous en avons en disant que la "Compliance" est "complexe" et "transdisciplinaire", comme si les mots compliqués pouvaient masquer notre désarroi. Mais la "Compliance" n'est pas un cataclysme, une bombe envoyée par les américains pour anéantir l'Europe, la nouvelle forme d'une Guerre froide en habits juridiques ; c'est une façon de voir des choses qui vient de loin, avec une cohérence qui lui est propre et qu'il faut avant tout comprendre. Pour mieux s'y déployer.

Si l'on comprend d'où vient ce nouveau corpus qui contraint aujourd'hui les entreprises à prouver qu'elles prennent effectivement en charge la concrétisation de certains buts qui les dépassent, notamment la lutte contre le blanchiment d'argent, la fraude fiscale, mais aussi la lutte contre la vente des êtres humains ou la lutte pour la préservation de la nature et de la planète, alors l'on peut continuer l'histoire, dans une nouvelle alliance entre certaines entreprises et les autorités publiques.

En effet, toutes les entreprises ne sont pas visées par une telle internalisation de "buts monumentaux" en leur sein. Une entreprise ordinaire a quant à elle vocation à se développer pour réaliser un but qui est le sien. Le système de Compliance ne peut concerner que des "entreprises cruciales". S'il doit y avoir changement de projet poursuivi par l'entreprise, cela ne peut tenir qu'à sa "position" dans un système. Cette position peut avoir une source objective (entreprise systémique) ou une source subjective, parce que l'entreprise veut concrétiser ces buts globaux car elle veut être "responsable". Dans ce cas, l'entreprise supporte alors la charge de preuve qu'un tel discours de responsabilité nouvelle correspond à un comportement et à une culture effective. Le poids des règles existe déjà aujourd'hui. Et c'est encore comme cela qu'aujourd'hui d'une façon négative et passive que la Compliance est perçue, par ceux qui la "subissent" (entreprises), voire par ceux qui l'appliquent (autorités publiques).

La transformation vers une "culture de confiance, c'est l'enjeu d'un passage entre aujourd'hui et demain. En effet demain, c'est une relation de confiance qui pourrait se construire entre ces entreprises-là et les autorités publiques, parce qu'elles partageaient les informations (enjeu systémique), parce qu'elles seraient d'accord sur les buts monumentaux (tous centrés sur la protection des êtres humains, que le seul fonctionnement marchand ne peut produire, que les seuls États ne peuvent assurer).

En cela, la "Compliance" est avant tout un pari, celui de la place des êtres humains sur des marchés mondialisés.

____

English Summary of the article. We have to admit, because we find it difficult to find ourselves in front of so numerous and disparate rules, going in all directions and constantly changing, we console ourselves with their weight, their cost and our misunderstanding by affirming that Compliance is "complex" and "transdisciplinary", as if complicated words could mask our disarray. But "Compliance" is not a cataclysm, a bomb sent by the Americans to annihilate Europe, the new form of a Cold War in legal dress, it is a way of seeing things that comes from afar, with a coherence of its own and which must first be understood.

If one understands where this new corpus comes from, which now obliges companies to prove that they effectively take on the fulfillment of certain goals that go beyond them, notably the fight against money laundering, tax evasion , but also the fight against the sale of human beings or the struggle for the preservation of nature and the Earth, then we can continue the story.

Indeed, not all companies are targeted by such internalization of "monumental goals" within them." An ordinary enterprise is destined to develop itself in order to achieve a goal which is its own. The concern of these goals can only be for the "crucial enterprises. "If there is to be a change in the corporate project, then it can only depend on its" position "in a system, a financial, economic, social, global system, or because it has itself decided that it would be so. The company then bears the burden of proof that such a discourse of new responsibility corresponds to a behavior and an effective culture. The weight of the rules already exists today. And it is for the moment that now, in a negative and passive way, Compliance is perceived, by those who "undergo" it (companies), even by those who apply it (public authorities).

The transformation towards a "culture of trust" is the issue between today and tomorrow, because tomorrow, it is a relationship of trust that could be built between these companies and the public authorities, because they would share information (systemic issue), because they would agree on the less technical monumental goals (protection of human beings issue).

In this, "Compliance" is above all a bet, that of the place of human beings in globalized markets.

____

📕Lire une présentation générale du livre, Compliance : l'entreprise, le régulateur et le juge, dans lequel cet article est publié.

Consulter les autres titres de la Série dans laquelle est publié l'ouvrage.

Référence complète : Roussel Galle, Ph. et Douaoui-Chamseddine, M., Les défaillances bancaires et financières : un droit spécial ?, Revue de droit bancaire et financier, déc. 2014, p.64-65.

Les étudiants de Sciences po peuvent lire l'article par le drive dans le dossier "MAFR - Régulation"

Paru en 2011, ce numéro thématique porte sur "La supervision" au regard du risque systémique, tandis que le précédent portait sur "La régulation" au regard de ce même thème.

Il en ressort, pour éviter la prochaine crise, la volonté d'étendre la supervision, notamment aux "non-banques", comme les compagnies d'assurance, et de la renforcer, notamment quant aux moyens de contrôle, de surveillance et de sanction des Autorités de supervision.

Référence complète : FRISON-ROCHE, Marie-Anne, La nature hybride du Conseil de régulation financière et du risque systémique, D.2010, chron., p.2712-2714.

Le Conseil de la régulation financière et du risque systémique établi par la loi du 22 octobre 2010 montre que la summa divisio entre régulation et prudentiel n’existe plus, puisque les opérateurs financiers sont systémiques. La composition du Conseil le cristallise en rassemblant le gouverneur de la Banque de France, le président de l’AMF et le président de l’Autorité des normes comptables. En outre, le Conseil revient sur la distinction naguère affirmée entre régulation et politique, puisque ces présidents d’Autorités indépendantes sont présidés par le Ministre de l’Économie. Cela tient au fait que la sortie de la crise suppose le recours à la décision purement politique. Si ces deux liens, avec le prudentiel, avec le politique, avaient été reconnus, la crise ne serait peut-être pas advenue.

Accéder à l'article

Accéder à l'article en langue anglaise

Lire le résumé de l'article ci-dessous.

Full Reference : Frison-Roche, M.-A., "L’hypothèse de l’interrégulation", in Frison-Roche, M.-A. (ed.) Les risques de régulation, coll. « Droit et Économie de la Régulation », t.3, Dalloz / Presses de Sciences-Po, 2005, p.69-80.

The topic of of this article is to propose a new notion, already presented in 2001 in the article "Regulation Law": "Interregulation".

This mechanism will makes more easier a unified decision when several autonomous, even contradictory, regulations are legitimate to rule a situation. This creation therefore responds to a gap in the general system, of which the antimony is a variant. Political power no longer has the means to unify these disparate sources because it is "overtaken by the globalization of sectors and markets. Likewise, the hierarchical mode of traditional law cannot be suitable for autonomous sectorial regulations. There is therefore a need for interregulation between regulators, for the creation of a common "doctrine", or by procedural means, such as "authorized advice".

Read the article. (written in French)

Read the general presentation, written in English, of the collective book, Les risques de régulation, in which this article has been published.

Below, read the article Summary. 

After defining what may be a "crisis of Regulation" and stressing that the crisis is a political phenomenon, the book devotes its first part of "systemic risk," which refers to the assumption of the general crisis. This hypothesis is exposed to prospectively or from cases in different sectors, e.g. financial, energy and health, before wondering how to organize post-crisis.

The regulation itself including risk, the book chooses to study especially the inconsistency because it is the higher legal risk for an economic system. Therefore, it is proposed to organize inter-regulation mechanisms.

Finally, the specific risks Regulator is able to address are conflicts, through the dispute settlement mechanism, derived from judicial system. It is examined in each of the regulated sectors.

► Référence complète : Frison-Roche, M.-A., L’office de règlement des différends, entre régulation et juridiction, in Les risques de régulation, coll. « Droit et Economie de la Régulation », t.3, Dalloz / Presses de Sciences-Po, 2005, p. 269-287.

____

► Résumé de l'article : La notion d’office, si usuelle lorsque l’on parle du juge, doit aussi être utilisée concernant le régulateur, en ce qu’elle renvoie à la notion de mission, à la noblesse d’un service guidé par sa finalité. Mais autant il est usuel de considérer que le premier office d’un juge est de trancher les litiges, autant la doctrine estime qu’un régulateur ne prend en charge cette tâche que d’une façon auxiliaire. En effet, le juge serait toujours enfermé dans le rapport bilatéral entre les parties qui se disputent, alors que le régulateur est en charge d’un système.

____

Accéder à l'article.

____

📕 Lire une présentation générale de l'ouvrage dans lequel l'article est publié.

____

Lire le résumé développé de l'article ci-dessous