Food for thoughts

 

La régulation est née de la nécessité de prendre en compte la spécificité des secteurs, souvent en accompagnement de la libéralisation de ceux-ci.

Mais, en premier lieu, des biens de différents secteurs peuvent être substituables. Ainsi, l’on peut se chauffer aussi bien au gaz qu’à l’électricité, la concurrence intermodale rendant moins pertinente la segmentation de la régulation du secteur de l’électricité et la régulation du secteur du gaz. Pareillement, un contrat d’assurance-vie est à la fois un instrument de protection pour l’avenir, un produit relevant donc de la régulation assurantielle, mais aussi produit financier placé auprès des consommateurs par des entreprises de banque-assurance, relevant donc de la régulation bancaire et financière. Cette intimité de la régulation par rapport à la technicité interne de l’objet sur lequel elle porte ne peut être effacée.

L'interrégulation qui va se mettre en place est d'abord institutionnelle. C’est pourquoi, une alternative s’ouvre : soit on fusionne les autorités, et  ainsi la Grande Bretagne par la Financial Services Authority (FSA) a, dès 2000, fusionné la régulation financière et bancaire, ce que la France n’a pas fait (tandis que la France a fusionné la régulation des assurances et la régulation bancaire à travers l’ACPR). Ainsi, la première branche de l’alternative est la fusion institutionnelle, au risque de constituer des sortes de Titans, voire de reconstituer l’État. Soit on établit des procédures de consultation et de travaux communes, pour faire naître des points de contact, voire une base de doctrine commune contre les régulateur. L’autre branche de l’alternative consiste à respecter ce rapport initial entre régulation et secteur et de prendre acte des liens entre les secteurs à travers la notion proposée de « inter-régulation ». Cela suppose alors de mettre en place des réseaux entre des autorités demeurées autonomes, mais qui s’échangent des informations, se rencontrent, collaborent sur des dossiers communs, etc. Cette interrégulation peut d’abord être horizontale lorsque des autorités de plusieurs secteurs collaborent, par exemple l’autorité de contrôle prudentiel et l’autorité des marchés financiers, ou l’ARCEP et le CSA. Elle peut être aussi de type vertical lorsque les autorités de secteurs nationaux collaborent avec des autorités étrangères ou des autorités européennes ou internationales, comme le prévoit le processus Lamfalussy en matière financière (élargi aux secteurs de la banque et des assurances) ou le processus de Madrid en matière énergétique par lesquels chaque régulateur nationaux se rencontrent et travaillent en commun, avec et autour de la Commission européenne (technique de la comitologie).

L'interrégulation qui est ensuite notionnelle, un "droit commun" de la régulation s'élaborant, commun entre tous les secteurs. Ce "droit commun" (droit horizontal) est venu après la maturation des droits sectoriels de la régulation (droits verticaux). Il s'élabore de fait parce que les objets régulés se situent à la frontière de plusieurs secteurs, voire ignorent celle-ci : par exemple les produits financiers dérivés sur sous-jacent agricole ou énergétique. Plus encore, les "objets collectés" engendrent de l'interrégulation dans l'espace numérique. Ainsi, alors même qu'il est possible qu'Internet, donne lieu à une "interrégulation" avant de donner lieu à une régulation spécifique, celle-ci pouvant justifier que l'on se passe de la première. 

Référence : Beauvais, P., Méthode transactionnelle et justice pénale, in  Gaudemet, A. (dir.), La compliance : un nouveau monde? Aspects d'une mutation du droit, coll. "Colloques", éd. Panthéon-Assas, Panthéon-Assas, 2016, pp. 79-90.

Voir la présentation générale de  l'ouvrage dans lequel l'article a été publié.

The goal for which a mechanism, a solution an institution or a rule is adopted, instituted or elaborated, is in principle external to them. Knowledge of this goal is a tool to better understand them and is only that.

On the contrary, in Regulation Law, the goal is the heart itself. By definition, Regulation Law is a set of instruments that articulate to take their meaning in relation to a goal. Moreover, these instruments are legitimate to represent a constraint only because they realize a goal which is itself legitimate. The interpretation of Regulation Law is based on the aims pursued: the reasoning is teleological.

This teleological nature explains that efficiency is no longer merely a concern - as for ordinary legal mechanisms, but rather a principle of Regulation Law. It explains the welcome, especially through the European Union Law of the theory of the useful effect. This link between rules, which are only means, and aims, refers to the principle of proportionality, which requires that constraints and exceptions be applied only when they are necessary, proportionality being the form off the classic principle of necessity.

Because the aim is the center, it must be expressed by the author of the Regulation standards, and this is all the more so if they are of a political nature, being not limited to mitigating technical failures of markets. This goal can be varied: the management of systemic risks, but also the consideration of the fundamental rights of people, the preservation of the environment, public health, civilization, education, etc. The silence of the legislature, which limits itself to the making of rules whereas these are merely instruments, without explicating the goal whereas the latter is a political decision, is a fault in the legislative art.

Moreover, in order that the person who applies the Regulation norm, in particular the Regulator and the Judge, has no excessive margin for interpretation and does not substitute for political power, the author of the Regulation norm needs to aim specifically for one goal : in this way, the one who applies the norm will be constrained. Or, if the author targets several purposes, then he must articulate them in relation to each other, by hierarchizing them for example. If he fails to do so, the institution which applies the regulatory standards will itself have to choose the purpose and exercise a power which he does not possess.

This express designation of purpose has been made for the European Banking Union,  this Regulation and Supervision construction, whose primary aim is to prevent systemic risks and resolve crises. Similarly, the purpose of the Regulation of essentiel infrastructures is to provide third parties access to the network. Similarly, in the case of a transitional regulation introduced following liberalization, the aim is to establish competition, the principle of which has been declared by the liberalization law. When this is not clearly stated, there is a lapse in the legislative art.

 

 

► Référence complète : D. Esty et M. Hautereau-Boutonnet, "Derrière les procès climatiques français et américains : des systèmes politique, juridique et judiciaire en opposition", D.2022, p.1606 et s.

____
 

The Office of Communications (Ofcom) is the UK's communications regulator.

This independent regulator is competent both for television, radio and television services, but also for the post office.

In addition, there are very diverse missions, such as not only the allocation of licenses but also data protection or public policies of diversity and equality.

We can consider that these are the broadest competences that can be conferred on a regulator with regard to "communication" activities!footnote-767.

In Europe, Community Law prohibits States from providing aid to companies, which are analyzed as means for the benefit of their country which the State cares about (and sometimes wrongly)  having the effect and maybe the object of maintaining or constructing borders between peoples, thus contradicting the first European political project of a common area of peace and exchanges between the peoples of Europe. That is why this prohibition does not exist in the United States, since Antitrust Law is not intended to build such a space, which is already available to businesses and people.

This essential difference between the two zones changes industrial policies because the US federal Government can help sectors where Member States can not. The European prohibition of State Aid can not be called into question because it is associated with the political project of Europe. This seems to be an aporia since Europe is handicapped against the United States.

In any form it takes, Aid is prohibited because it distorts equality of opportunity in competition between  operators in the markets and constitutes a fundamental obstacle to the construction of a unified European internal market. On the basis of this simple principle, a branch of technical and specific law has developed, because States continue to support their entreprises and sectors, and many rules and cases divide this principe of prohibition into as many exceptions and nuances. Is built over the years a probation system related to it. Thus, the concept of a public enterprise was able to remain despite this principle of prohibition.

But if there is a crisis of such a nature or magnitude that the market does not succeed by its own forces to overcome and / or the European Union itself pursues a-competitive objectives, exogenous Regulation, which can then take the form of legitimate State Aid. Thus a sort of synonymy exists between State Aid and Regulation.

For this reason, the European institutions have asserted that State Aid becomes lawful when it intervenes either in strategic sectors, such as energy production in which the State must retain its power over assets, or the defense sector. Far from diminishing, this hypothesis is increasing. European Union Law also allows the State to intervene by lending to financial operators threatened with default or already failing, the State whose function is to fight systemic risk, directly or through its Central Bank. The aid can come from the European Central Bank itself helping States in issuing sovereign debt, the Court of Justice having admitted in 2015 the non-conventional monetary policy programs compliance with the treaties. In 2010, the European Commissioner for Competition stressed that public aid is essential tools for States to deal with crises, before regulations come to the fore in 2014 to lay the foundations of the European Banking Union.

First of all, the Regulation and Compliance Law is difficult to understand in others languages than English, through translation, for example in French.  This corpus of rules and institutions suffers from ambiguity and confusion because of its vocabulary of Anglophone origin, in which words or expressions that are similar or identical have not the same meaning in English and, for example, in French..

To every lord all honor, this is the case for the term "Regulation".

In English, "regulation" refers to the phenomenon which the French language expresses by the term "Régulation". But it can also aim at the complete fitting of what will hold a sector reaching a market failure and in which regulation is only one tool among others. The expression "regulatory system" will be used with precision, but also the term "Regulation", the use of the capital letter indicating the difference between the simple administrative power to take texts ("regulation") and the entire system which supports the sector ("Regulation"). It is inevitable that in a quick reading, or even by the play of digital, which overwrites the capital letters, and the automatic translations, this distinction of formulation, which stands for a lower / upper case, disappears. And confusion arises.

The consequences are considerable. It is notably because of this homonymy, that frequently in the French language one puts at the same level the Droit de la Régulation ("regulatory law, Regulation") and the réglementation (regulation). It will be based on such an association, of a tautological nature, to assert that "by nature" the Regulatory Law  is "public law", since the author of the reglementation (regulation) is a person of public law, in particular the State or Independent administrative authorities such as Regulators. There remains the current and difficult justification for the considerable presence of contracts, arbitrators, etc. Except to criticize the very idea of Regulatory Law, because it would be the sign of a sort of victory of the private interests, since conceived by instruments of private law.

Thus two major disadvantages appear. First of all, it maintains in the Law of Regulation the summa divisio of Public and Private Law, which is no longer able to account for the evolution of Law in this field and leads observers, notably economists or international Institutions, to assert that the Common Law system would be more adapted today to the world economy notably because if it does indeed place administrative law, constitutional law, etc., it does not conceive them through the distinction Law Public / private law, as the Continental system of Civil Law continues to do.

Secondly, no doubt because this new Law draws on economic and financial theories that are mainly built in the United Kingdom and the United States, the habit is taken to no longer translate. In other languages, for example, texts written in French are phrases such as "le Régulateur doit être  accountable".

It is inaccurate that the idea of ​​accountability is reducible to the idea of ​​"responsibility". The authors do not translate it, they do not recopy and insert it in texts written in French.

One passes from the "translation-treason" to the absence of translation, that is to say to the domination of the system of thought whose word is native, here the U.K. and the U.S.A.

One of the current major issues of this phenomenon is in the very term of "Compliance". The French term "conformité" does not translate it. To respect what compliance is, it is appropriate for the moment to recopy the word itself, so as not to denature the concept by a translation. The challenge is to find a francophone word that expresses this new idea, particularly with regard to legal systems that are not common law, so that their general framework remains.

► Référence complète : P.-Y. Gautier, « Contre le droit illimité à la preuve devant les autorités administratives indépendantes », Mélanges en l'honneur du Professeur Claude Lucas de Leyssac, LexisNexis, 2018, p.181-193.

____

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

 

 

Watch the video explaining the "right to be forgotten".

The "right to be forgotten" is a recent and specifically European invention. It was designed by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Google Spain judgment of May 13, 2014, so that in this world without time, in which all information is eternally stored and available that is the digital world, the individual thus exposed can be protected against this new phenomenon, since forgetting no longer exists, by Law which by its power endows it with a "right to be forgotten". In this the term Right to be forgotten is more accurate.

Because Law is made to protect human beings, the technological efficiency which created the digital world is limited by the new legal prerogative of the person to make unattainable information which concerns him when it takes on a "personal character". This was taken up by the community regulation of April 27, 2016, often called GDPR, transposed in the member states of the European Union no later than May 25, 2018.

More than in the laws which have taken up the idea of ​​protection of persons in the handling of "data" by others, expressing more the concern to protect the consumer in a market economy, it is a question of directly protecting persons. in a technological world allowing blind obedience, Europe rejecting this model because the technique of the files left him a terrible memory because of the Second World War. However, Law is the memory of peoples and expresses the “spirit” of these (Savigny).

Retourner à la présentation générale du Cours.

Cette bibliographie générale rassemble quelques références générales, qui se superposent ou croisent les bibliographies plus spécifiques sur :

 

• Doctrine (par ordre alphabétique), la présentation distinguant quelques ouvrages généraux avant de répertorie des études pertinentes pour comprendre le "Droit commun de la Régulation"

 

• Textes de droit international, textes de systèmes juridiques étrangers,textes de l'Union européennes, textes de droit français

 

• Littérature grise

 

Référence complète : Gauvain, R. et Marleix, O., Rapport d'information sur l'évaluation de l'impact de la loi n° 2016-1691 du 9 décembre 2016 relative à la transparence, à la lutte contre la corruption et à la modernisation de la vie économique, 2021.

____

 

Lire le rapport. 

________

Legally, the State is a public law subject defined by territory, people and institutions. It acts in the international space and emits norms. Politically, it has the legitimacy required to express the will of the social body and to exercise the violence of which it deprives the other subjects of law. It is often recognizable by its power: its use of public force, its budgetary power, its jurisdictional power. These three powers, declining or being challenged by private, international and more satisfying mechanisms, some predicted the disappearance of the State, to deplore it or to dance on its corpse.

With such a background, in current theories of Regulation, primarily constructed by economic thought and at first sight one might say that the State is above all the enemy. And this for two main reasons. The first is theoretical and of a negative nature. The advocates of the theory of regulation deny the State the political qualities set out above. The State would not be a "person" but rather a group of individuals, civil servants, elected officials and other concrete human beings, expressing nothing but their particular interests, coming into conflict with other interests, and using their powers to serve the former rather than the latter as everyone else. The Regulation theory, adjoining the theory of the agency, is then aimed at controlling public agents and elected representatives in whom there is no reason to trust a priori.

The second reason is practical and positive. The State would not be a "person" but an organization. Here we find the same perspective as for the concept of enterprise, which classical lawyers conceive as a person or a group of people, while economists who conceive of the world through the market represent it as an organization. The state as an organization should be "efficient" or even "optimal". It is then the pragmatic function of the Regulation Law. When it is governed by traditional law, entangled by that it would be an almost religious illusions of the general interest, or even the social contract, it is suboptimal. The Regulation purpose is about making it more effective.

To this end, as an organization, the State is divided into independent regulatory agencies or independent administrative authorities that manage the subjects as close as possible, which is fortunate in reducing the asymmetry of information and in reviving trust in a direct link. The unitary, distant and arrogant State is abandoned for a flexible and pragmatic conception of a strategic state (without capital ...) that would finally have understood that it is an organization like any other ...

Competition law adopts this conception of the State, which it posed from the beginning that it was an economic operator like any other. This is how this conception which would be  more "neutral" of the world is often presented.

Successive crises, whether sanitary or financial, have produced a pendulum effect.

Now, the notions of general interest or common goods are credited of an autonomous value, and the necessity of surpassing immediate interests and of finding persons to bear superior interests or to take charge of the interests of others, even a non-immediate one, emerged.

Thus, the State or the public authority, reappears in the globalization. The Compliance Law or the Corporal Social Responsibility of the crucial companies are converging towards a consideration of the State, which can not be reduced to a pure and simple organization receptacle of externalities.

 

► Full Reference: B. Deffains, "Debt as the basis of the Compliance Obligation", in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Compliance Obligation, Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, "Compliance & Regulation" Serie, to be published

____

📘read a general presentation of the book, Compliance Obligation, in which this article is published

____

► Summary of the article (done by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance - JoRC): The contribution builds on the definition of Compliance in that it requires large companies to contribute to the achievement of Monumental Goals, including the preservation of human rights and systems, e.g. climate system.  

This requirement is confronted with the notion of Debt as it results today from classic and new works available in economic science. In fact, in the primitive economy, debt refers not only to exchanges, but also to an ethical and social obligation leading back to the collective. The Economic Analysis of Law has highlighted this situation, where some of the entities involved in a situation benefit from positive externalities, or endure negative externalities on their own, thus creating a situation of debt: this generates an obligation to correct market failure through an obligation to manage risks, as expressed by Compliance Obligation. This implies that economic calculation can be used to quantify this debt, leading to new proposals for biodiversity accounting.

The author then highlights the recognition of Debt as the source of an Compliance Obligation. This can be expressed through the classical notion of natural obligation, which can be traced back to the French Civil Code, or through more solidarist or political conceptions of Law, linked to moral responsibility, with the overall moral equilibrium referring to civic duty, superimposed on the accounting equilibrium. The political dimension is very much present, as shown by Grotius and Kant, then Bourgeois (solidarism), Rawls and Sen (social justice), who link the deep commitment of each individual with the group. This sheds light on the essential role played by the State and public institutions in formalising and enforcing the Compliance Obligation, not only to ensure its effectiveness, but also to make everyone aware of its fairness dimension.

____

🦉This article is available in full text to those registered for Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche's courses

________

A monopoly refers to the power of a person to remove from a good its utility by excluding others. The monopoly refers to a situation on the market, the monopolist being the sole operator in the market. Lawyers are accustomed to the monopoly conferred by Law, for example the one that was the monopoly for the national public enterprise for electricity. In this case, what is done may be defeated, and the legislature may withdraw that privilege especially if the author of this norm is better placed in the hierarchy of norms than the previous author. For example, the European Union legislature withdrew the legal monopolies by means of directives from most of the operators holding them in the regulated sectors in order to liberalize them.

But the monopoly can have an economic source. Indeed, it may happen that a first operator constructs a structure, for example a wired telecommunications transport network. Because he is alone, agents on the market must resort to him to carry their communications, his business will be profitable. But from there, if a second operator built such an infrastructure, it would inevitably be in deficit for insufficient applicants. This is why no rational economic agent will build a second network. Thus, this network will remain unique. It is then an economically acquired monopoly that the legislative will can not change its nature. That is why it is called "natural".

Since what is can not be changed, Community law has taken note of the monopolistic nature of the majority of networks and the correlated power of their owner or manager, but has correlatively provided for their supervision by a regulator who not only Ex post to resolve possible differences between the infrastructure manager, the natural essential facility, and the one who wants to access it, but also, through an Ex ante power, to negotiate with that manager the return on his capital, his commitments investment in the network, etc., or even more directly by imposing on it the way in which it fixes access tariffs and so on.

These economically natural monopolies are therefore more powerful than legal monopolies, which States and lawyers have taken a long time to understand, but this also explains the reverse tendency of economists to write laws, The texts must handle this type of notions, its writers caring little about the political order and legal notions. The fact that the laws and regulations on regulated situations and supervised operators have long been elaborated solely from the point of view of lawyers, particularly of the public service, which was regrettable, does not justify this passage from one extreme to the other.

The economic theory of incentives implicitly assumes that an operator can not be compelled to act against his will, or at least that it is more efficient to offer him advantages in such a way that he does what he wants . In this, this conception is opposed to the traditional conception of Law, which posits, on the contrary, that subjects obey the order dictated by the legal norm.

But in globalized markets, operators have the tools to disobey and the asymmetry of information diminishes the power of control of the Regulators, which raises doubts as to the effectiveness of the legal constraint: it is not enough that the Law orders. In these circumstances, texts, regulators and judges must produce conditions that encourage agents to adopt behaviors that are consistent with the aims sought by the Regulators because the operators themselves have an interest in them.

Thus, whilst regulatory systems in any sector become increasingly repressive, even in liberal economies, it is not so much to punish the perpetrator but to incite others who are tempted to commit crimes, To abandon them. It is the system of exemplarity. This thought prior to Beccaria participates in the re-feoadization of the Law, demonstrated by Pierre Legendre, associated with the decline of the State and to which the Regulation fully participates. Judgeshave little inclination to handle repression in this way, which creates a clash between Criminal Law and Regulatory Law, which nevertheless puts repression at its center.

In the same way, Regulatory Systems must inject positive incentives, for example rewards for communication of information, which encourages delation, or incentives done by the regulator for the network manager make investments in the maintenance of it, against the immediate interest of its shareholder. Finally, all patent law and economics are now thought of as an incentive to inn/en/article/innovation/ovate. But, some incentives have proven perverse such as stock-options or bonuses. As a result, new texts seek to regulate these.

Cette bibliographie indicative vise des :

• ouvrages généraux

 

• ouvrages abordant la Régulation et la Compliance bancaire et financière à l'occasion d'un autre sujet principalement traité

 

• sites pertinents pour l'étude du Droit de la Régulation bancaire et financière

 

• ouvrages et articles portant spécifiquement sur la Régulation et la Compliance bancaire et financière

 

The procedural guarantees enjoyed by a person whose situation may be affected by a forthcoming judgment are mainly the right of action, the rights of defense and the benefit of the adversarial principle.

The rights of the defense have constitutional value and constitute human rights, benefiting everyone, including legal persons. The mission of positive Law is to give effect to them in good time, that is to say from the moment of the investigation or custody, which is manifested for example by the right to the assistance of a lawyer or the right to remain silent or the right to lie. Thus the rights of the defense are not intended to help the manifestation of the truth, do not help the judge or the effectiveness of repression - which is what the principle of adversarial law does - they are pure rights, subjective for the benefit of people, including even especially people who may be perfectly guilty, and seriously guilty.

The rights of the defense are therefore an anthology of prerogatives which are offered to the person implicated or likely to be or likely to be affected. It does not matter if it possibly affects the efficiency. These are human rights. This is why their most natural holder is the person prosecuted in criminal proceedings or facing a system of repression. This is why the triggering of the power of a tribunal or a judge offers them in a consubstantial way to the one who is by this sole fact - and legitimately - threatened by this legitimate violence (one of the definitions of the State ).

The rights of the defense therefore begin even before the trial because the "useful time" begins from the investigation phase, from the searches, even from the controls, and continues on the occasion of appeals against the decision adversely affecting the decision. The legal action being a means of being a party, that is to say of making arguments in its favor, and therefore of defending its case, shows that the plaintiff in the proceedings also holds legal defense rights since he is not only plaintiff in the proceedings but he also plaintiff and defendant to the allegations which are exchanged during the procedure: he alleged to the allegation of his opponent is not correct.

They take many forms and do not need to be expressly provided for in texts, since they are principled and constitutionally benefit from a broad interpretation (ad favorem interpretation). This is the right to be a party (for example the right of intervention, the right of action - which some distinguish from the rights of the defense - the right to be questioned, such as the right to be brought into question (or examination), right to be assisted by a lawyer, right to remain silent, right not to incriminate oneself, right of access to the file, right to intervene in the debate (the rights of the defense thus crossing the adversarial principle), right to appeal, etc.

It is essential to qualify an organ as a tribunal because this triggers for the benefit of the person concerned the procedural guarantees, including the rights of the defense, which on the basis of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights man was made about the Regulators yet formally organized in Independent Administrative Authorities (AAI). This contributed to the general movement of jurisdictionalization of Regulation.

Référence complète Fox, E., The new world order, in Mélanges Joël Monéger, Liber Amicorum en l'honneur du Professeur Joël Monéger, LexisNexis, 2017, 818 p.  

 

"Compliance" is the typical example of a translation problem.

Indeed and for example, the term "Compliance" is most often translated by the French term "Conformité". But to read the texts, notably in Financial Law, "Conformité" is aimed rather at professional obligations, mainly aimed at the ethics and conduct of market professionals, especially service providers of investment. It is both a clearer definition in its contours (and in this more certain) and less ambitious than that expressed by the "Compliance". It is therefore, for the moment, more prudent to retain, even in French, the expression "Compliance".

The definition of Compliance is both contentious and highly variable, since according to the authors, it goes solely from the professional obligations of financial market participants to the obligation to comply with laws and regulations. In this latter sense, that is, the general obligation that we all have to respect the Law. To admit that, Compliance would be Law itself.

Viewed from the point of view of Law, Compliance is a set of principles, rules, institutions and general or individual decisions, corpus of which the primary concern is efficiency, in space and in time. The purpose is to put into practice general interest goal targeted by these gathered techniques.

The list of these goals, whether negative ("fighting": corruption, terrorism, embezzlement of public funds, drug trafficking, trafficking in human beings, organ trafficking, trafficking in poisonous and contagious goods - medicines, financial products, etc.) or positive ("fighting for": access to essential goods for everyone, preservation of the environment, fundamental human rights, education, peace , transmission of the planet to future generations) shows that these are political goals.

These goals correspond to the political definition of the Regulatory Law.

These political goals require means which exceed the forces of the States, which are also confined within their borders.

These monumental goals have therefore been internalized by public authorities in global operators. The Compliance Law corresponds to a new structuring of these global operators. This explains why the new laws put in place not only objective but structural repressions, as in France the "Sapin 2 Law" (2016) or the "obligation of vigilance Law" (2017) .

This internationalization of the Regulatory Law  in companies implies that the public authorities now supervise the latter, even if they do not belong to a supervised sector, or even to a regulated sector, but participate, for example, in international trade.

The Law of Compliance thus expresses a global political will relayed by this violent new Law, most often repressive, on companies.

But it can also express on the part of the operators, in particular the "crucial operators" a desire to have themselves concern for these monumental global goals, whether of a negative or a positive nature. This ethical dimension, expressed in particular by the Corporate Social Responsibility, is the continuation of the spirit of the public service and the concern for the general interest, raised world-wide.

► Full Reference: F. Raynaud, "The administrative judge and compliance", in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Compliance Jurisdictionalisation, coll. "Compliance & Regulation", Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, 2023, p. 

____

📘read a general presentation of the book, Compliance Jurisdictionalisation, in which this article is published

____

► Summary of the article:

________

Une dissertation juridique suit les règles de construction et de rédaction généralement requises pour les dissertations d'une façon générale mais présente certaines spécificités.

Le présent document a pour objet de donner quelques indications. Elles ne valent pas "règles d'or", mais un étudiant qui les suit ne peut se le voir reprocher. La correction des copies tiendra compte non seulement du fait que les étudiants ne sont pas juristes, ne sont pas habitués à faire des "dissertations juridiques", mais encore prendra en considération le présent document.

 

Référence complète : Lalande, P.-A., Le pouvoir d’injonction au service de la réparation du préjudice écologique : une mise en œuvre de l’office du juge administratif en matière climatique, Actu-Juridique, 9 décembre 2021.

____

 

Lire l'article. 

_____

The notion of "Common Goods" refers to a political conception insofar as it concerns objectively commercial goods such as cultural goods or medical services, but which the community is going to demand that everyone should have access to it even though the individual does not have the ability to pay the exact price. It is then the taxpayer - present or future - or the social partners who bear the cost, or even some companies, through the corporal social social responsibility mechanism.

This protection of Common Goods can be done by the State in the name of the interest of the social group for which it is responsible and whose it expresses the will, particularly through the notion of the general interest. In this now restricted framework which is the State, this reference runs counter to the principle of competition. This is particularly clear in Europe, which is based on a Union built on an autonomous and integrated legal order in the Member States in which competition continues to have a principled value and benefits from the hierarchy of norms. The evolution of European Law has balanced the principle of competition with other principles, such as the management of systemic risks, for example health, financial or environmental risks and the creation of the banking union shows that the principle of competition is no longer an apex in the European system.

But it still remains to an economic and financial conception of Europe, definition that the definition of the Regulatory Law  when it is restricted to the management of the market failures feeds. It is conceivable that Europe will one day evolve towards a more humanistic conception of Regulatory  Law, the same one that the European States practice and defend, notably through the notion of public service. Indeed and traditionally, public services give people access to common goods, such as education, health or culture.

Paradoxically, even though Law is not set up on a global scale, it is at this level that the legal notion of "common goods" has developed.

When one refers to goods that are called "global goods", one then seeks goods that are common to humanity, such as oceans or civilizations. It is at once the heart of Nature and the heart of Human Being, which plunges into the past and the future. Paradoxically, the concept of "global goods" is still more political in substance, but because of a lack of global political governance, effective protection is difficult, as their political consecration can only be effective nationally or simply declaratory internationally. That is why this balance is at present only at national level, which refers to the difficulty of regulating globalization.

Thus, the "common goods" legally exist more under their black face: the "global evils" or "global ills" or "global failures", against which a "Global Law" actually takes place. The notion of "global evils" constitutes a sort of mirror of Common Goods. It is then observed that countries that develop legal discourse to regulate global evils and global goods thus deploy global unilateral national Law. This is the case in the United States, notably in financial regulatory Law or more broadly through the new Compliance Law, which is being born. Companies have a role to play, particularly through Codes of Conduct and Corporate Social Responsibility.

The insurance sector has always been regulated in that it presents a very high systemic risk, since the economic operators' strength is required for the operation of the sector and the bankruptcy of one of them may weaken or even collapse all. In addition, insurance is the sector in which moral hazard is the highest, since the insured will tend to minimize the risks to which he is exposed in order to pay the lowest premium possible, even though ehe company is engaged to cover an accident whose size can not be measured in advance. Thus, the science of insurance is above all that of probabilities.

The recent challenge of regulating insurance, both institutional, the construction and the powers of the regulator of the sector, and also functional, namely the relations that it must have with the other bodies and institutions, lies mainly in the relationship between the insurance regulator and the bank regulator, which refers to the concept of "interregulation." If the formal criteria are followed, the two sectors are distinct and the regulators must be similarly separated. There was the case in France before 2010. En 2010, considering activities, sensitive to the fact that insurance products, for example life insurance contracts, are mostly financial products, and moreover, through the notion of "bank-insurance", the same companies engage in both economic activities, the solution of an unique body has been chosen.

A part from the fact that in Competition Law companies are defined by market activity, the main consideration is that the risk of contamination and spread is common between insurance sector and banking sector. For this reason, the French  Ordinance of 21 January 2010 created the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel -ACP (French Prudential Supervisory Authority), which covers both insurance companies and banks, since their soundness must be subject to similar requirements and to an organization common. The law of July 2013 entrusted this Authority with the task of organizing the restructuring of these enterprises, thus becoming the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution - ACPR  (French Prudential Control and Resolution Authority).

However, the substantive rules are not unified, on the one hand because the insurers are not in favor of such assimilation with banks, secondly because the texts, essentially the European Directive on the insolvency of insurance companies ("Solvency II") , eemain specific to them, and at a distance from the Basel rules applying to banks, which contradict the institutional rapprochement exposed before. European construction reflects the specificity of the insurance sector, the Regulation of 23 November 2010 establishing EIOPA, which is a European quasi-regulator for pension funds, including insurance companies.

The current issue of insurance regulatory system is precisely the European construction. While the Banking Union, the Europe of banking regulation, is being built, the Europe of Insurance Regulation is not being built. Already because, rightly, it does not want to merge into the banking Europe, negotiations of the texts of "Solvency II" stumbling on this question of principle. We find this first truth: in practice, it is the definitions that count. Here: Can an insurance company define itself as a bank like any other?

L'enjeu actuel de la Régulation assurantielle est précisément la construction européenne. Tandis que par l’Union bancaire, l’Europe de la régulation bancaire se construit, l’Europe de la Régulation assurantielle ne se construit. Déjà parce que, à juste titre, elle ne veut pas se fondre dans l’Europe bancaire, les négociations des textes de « Solvabilité II » achoppant sur cette question de principe. L’on retrouve cette vérité première : en pratique, ce sont les définitions qui compte. Ici : une compagnie d’assurance peut-elle se définir comme une banque comme une autre ?

 

The market is normally self-regulated. It suffers from one-time failures when economic agents engage in anti-competitive behavior, mainly the abuse of dominant positions in the ordinary markets, or the abuse of markets in the financial markets, sanctioned ex post by the authorities in individual decisions.

But some sectors suffer from structural failures, which prevent them, even without malicious intent of agents, from reaching this mechanism of adjustment of supply and demand. The existence of an economically natural monopoly, for example a transport network, constitutes a structural failure. Another agent will not duplicate once the first network has been built, which prevents competition. An a-competitive regulation, either by nationalization, by a state control or by a control by a regulatory authority, is needed to ensure everyone's access to an essential facility. Also constitutes a market failure asymmetry of information, theorized through the notion of agency that hinders the availability and circulation of exhaustive and reliable information on markets, especially financial markets. This market failure carries with it a systemic risk, against which regulation is definitely built and entrusted to financial regulators and central banks.

In these cases, the implementation of regulations is a reaction of the State not so much by political rejection of the Market, but because the competitive economy is unfit to function. This has nothing to do with the hypothesis that the State is distancing itself from the Market, not because it is structurally flawed in relation to its own model, but because politics wants to impose higher values, expressed By the public service, whose market does not always satisfy the missions.