Food for thoughts

Référence complète : Boursier, M.-E., L’irrésistible ascension du whistleblowing en droit financier s’étend aux abus de marché, Bulletin Joly Bourse, 1ier septembre 2016.

Les étudiants de Sciences po peuvent lire l'article en accédant au dossier "MAFR - Régulation"

► Full Reference: Segonds, M., Compliance, Proportionality and Sanction. The example of the sanctions taken by the French Anticorruption Agency, in Frison-Roche, M.-A. (ed.),Compliance Monumental Goals, series "Compliance & Regulation", Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, to be published.

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► Article Summary:  Before devoting the developments of his article to the sole perspective of sanctions imposed under "Anti-corruption Compliance", the author recalls in a more general way that, as is the sanction, Compliance is in essence proportional: Proportionality is inherent to Compliance as it conditions any sanction, including a sanction imposed under Compliance.

This link between Proportionality and Compliance has been underlined by the French Anti-Corruption Agency (Agence française anticorruption - AFA) with regard to risk mapping, which must measure risks to arrive at effective and proportional measures. This same spirit of proportionality animates the recommendations of the AFA which are intended to apply according to the size of the company and its concrete organisation. It governs sanctions even more, in that punitive sanctions refer on one hand to Criminal Law, centered on the requirement of proportionality. Punitive sanctions It governs sanctions even more, in that punitive sanctions refer on the other hand to the disciplinary power of the manager who, from other sources of law, must integrate the legal requirement of proportionality when he/she applies external and internal compliance norms.

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📘see the general presentation of the book, Compliance Monumental Goals, in which this article is published

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The telecommunications sector was the first sector to be liberalized in Europe, not so much by political will but because technological progress had in fact already brought competition into the sector and it was better to organize it rather than to To allow competition to settle in disorder.

► Full Reference: J.-S. Borghetti, "The Relation between Tort Law and Compliance Obligation", in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Compliance Obligation, Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, "Compliance & Regulation" Serie, to be published

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

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► Summary of the article (done by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance - JoRC): The Author points out that in order to establish civil liability, it is first necessary to find fault, i.e. a deviation from an obligation, which will trigger a secondary obligation, that of reparation. But it can also be argued that it is from liability that this primary obligation arises, civil liability then revealing an obligation which existed only implicitly. That establishes a two-way relationship between liability and obligation. The Compliance Obligation illustrates this, in particular through the Obligation of Vigilance conceived by the French law of 2017.

The author therefore devotes the first part of his contribution to civil liability as a result of an Compliance Obligation, especially the Obligation of Vigilance. issued of the French law of 2017. After discussing whether the constraints generated by compliance should be classified as 'obligations', since there is no creditor, which therefore opens the way to liability in tort, he examines the conditions for incurring such liability, which are difficult, particularly with regard to the burden of proof and the demonstration of the causal link. The requirement concerning the latter may evolve in French law towards the admission of proportional causality, as is now accepted in certain cases in German case law.

In the second part of his contribution, the author deals with the hypothesis of civil liability as an indicator of a Compliance Obligation. He points out that the claims made, particularly in the cases of TotalOuganda (France) and Milieudefensie v. Shell (Netherlands) seek to obtain from the judge a such "revelation".

The author considers that it is not possible to draw from the  French 2017 law which refers to article 1240 of the French Civil Code on the liability because this article is referred to only in order to organise the consequences of a breach of article L.225-102-4 of the French Commercial Code organising the Obligation of Vigilance (article 1240 being therefore under the secondary obligation described above) and not to feed what this article L.225-102-4 requires under the primary obligation (defined above). 

On the other hand, the Shell judgment derives directly from civil liability an obligation to act. This is understandable if one takes the perspective and the measure of the future challenges posed, in this case in the area of climate change. But the author considers that it is up to the legislator to decide on such a development in Liability Law. 

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

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► Full reference : M.-A. Frison-Roche, Scientific coprdination and co-hosting of the colloquia series Compliance and Contract, organised on the initiative of the Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and its academic partners

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► The Symposium Series in a nutshell : As a direct continuation of the previous symposium series co-organised by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance and its partner universities on "Compliance Obligation", which served as the basis for the publication of the book 📘Compliance Obligation,  The series, some elements of which began in 2024 and others are already present in this book, explored in depth the specific theme of the links between compliance law and contracts. Indeed, compliance law is often analysed as the construction of laws and regulations to achieve "📘 Monumental Goals " of a political nature desired by States and public authorities, to the achievement of which systemic economic operations contribute through 📘Compliance Tools that are now well documented. Contracts are still relatively little studied, or even developed, in compliance systems that are often perceived through the orders issued, the technologies put in place and the 📘sanctions to be avoided or endured. On the contrary, the future of compliance law, particularly in its European conception, which places human beings at the centre of concerns for the sustainability of systems and the use of contracts, is the new conception that we must adopt. Contracts then appear to be both the means by which the subject company fulfils its legal obligations, forges relationships with other actors and deploys the necessary innovations. Contract law is both used and renewed as a result. The series of symposiums will examine various aspects of this general issue. It will result in the publication of a 📘book Compliance and Contrat.

► Presentation of symposiums in development : 

• 29 May 2026🧮THE JUDGE CONFRONTED WITH CONTRACTS OF COMPLIANCE AND COMPLIANCE CLAUSES: read the presentation

• 12 June 2026🧮THE "CONTRACT OF COMPLIANCE" : read the presentation

• 25  Septembre 2026🧮COMPLIANCE: CLAUSE BY CLAUSE: read the presentation

• October 2026🧮COMPLIANCE AND COMMON CONTRACT LAW : read the presentation

• September 2026🧮COMPLIANCE, VALUE CHAINS AND CONTRACT: read the presentation

• 2 November 2026 🧮COMPLIANCE AND THE STRATEGIC CONTRACTUAL ORGANISATION OF CHAINS VALUE BY ENTERPRISES: read the presentation 

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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: 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. 

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

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► Summary of the article:

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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

Control is a concept so central in Regulation that, in the difficult exercise of translation, the English term of "Regulation" or the expression "Regulatory system" are often translated, for example in French,, by the French word "control" (contrôle). Indeed, the Regulator controls the sector for which he  is responsible. This control is carried out ex ante by the adoption of standards of behavior, whether the Regulator prohibits behavior or obliges the operators to do so. In addition, the Regulators exercises his control powers through the power to approve companies entering the sector or the power to certify certain types of products sold on the markets for which he is responsible. In addition, he continuously monitors the sectors for which he is responsible since his function is either to construct them to bring them to maturity or to remain in balance between the principle of competition and another concern, for example to ensure that they do not fall into a systemic crisis.

These ex ante controls radically distinguish the regulatory authority from the competition authority, which intervenes only ex post. Finally, the regulatory authority controls the sector in ex post: in this he works on a temporal continuum, sanctioning the failings he finds on the part of the operators to the prescriptions he has adopted himself. he often has the power to settle disputes if two operators compete in a dispute between them and bring it before him.

This control function specific of the regulatory authority, which it often shares with the traditional administration and which opposes it to the activity of the competition authority and the courts, is made difficult by its possible lack of independence. Indeed, because the Regulator is a State boddy, if the regulator has to control a public operator, it may risk being captured by the government, since the whole organization of the regulatory system must therefore ensure its independence not only statutory but also budgetary in relation to it. This risk of capture is permanent not only because of the government but also because of the sector. Secondly, control can be inefficient if the regulator lacks adequate, reliable and timely information, risk generated by information asymmetry.

To fight against this, according to the childish image of the stick and the carrot, we must at the same time give the regulator powers to extirpate information that the operators do not want to provide, the texts never ceasing to give regulators new powers, such as perquisitions power ou sanction ou settlemeent. Symmetrically, operators are encouraged to provide information to the market and the regulator, for example through leniency programs or the multiplication of information to be inserted in company documents. Finally, there is a difficult balance between the need to combat the capture of the regulator and the need to reduce the asymmetry of information since the best way for the latter to obtain information from the sector is by frequent attendance by operators: , This exchange that they accept very willingly is the open voice to the capture. It is therefore an art for the regulator to keep operators at a distance while obtaining from them information that only untended relationships allow him to obtain.

Moreover, the Compliance Law which is in the process of being put in place is intended to resolve this major difficulty, since the operator becomes the primary agent for the implementation of the Regulation Law, whose aims are internalized in the " crucial " and global operators perator, operator crucial and global, the Regulator ensuring the effective structural change of the operator to realize these goals of this Global Regulation Law.

Competition is the law of the market. It allows the emergence of the exact price, which is often referred to as "fair price". It means and requires that agents on the market are both mobile, that is to say free to exercise their will, and atomized, that is to say, not grouped together. This is true for those who offer a good or service, the offerers, as well as for those seeking to acquire them, the applicants: the bidders seek to attract the applicants so that they buy them the goods and services that they propose.  Bidders are in competition with each other.

In the competitive market, buyers are indulging in their natural infidelity: even if they have previously bought a product from an A supplier, they will be able to turn away from him in favor of a B supplier if the latter offers them a product more attractive in terms of quality or price. Price is the main signal and information provided by the suppliers on the market to excite this competitive mobility of the offerers. Thus, free competition accelerates market liquidity, the circulation of goods and services, raises the quality of products and services and lowers prices. It is therefore a moral and virtuous system, as Adam Smith wanted, a system which is the fruits of individual vices. That is why everything that will inject "viscosity" into the system will be countered by Competition Law as "non-virtuous": not only frontal coordination on prices but for example, exclusivity clauses, agreements by which companies delay their entry on the market or intellectual property rights which confer on the patentee a monopoly.

Admittedly, Competition Law can not be reduced to a presentation of such simplicity, since it admits economic organizations which deviate from this basic model, for example distribution networks or patent mechanisms on which, inter alia, is built the pharmaceutical sector. But the impact is probative: in the sphere of Competition Law, if one is in a pattern that is not part of the fundamental figure of the free confrontation of supply and demand, he has to demonstrate the legitimacy and efficiency of its organization, which is a heavy burden on the firm or the State concerned.

Thus, in the field of Regulation, if regulatory mechanis were to be regarded as an exception to competition, an exception admitted by the competition authorities, but which should be constantly demonstrated before them by its legitimacy and effectiveness in the light of the "competitive order", then public organizations and operators in regulated sectors would always face a heavy burden of proof. This is what the competition authorities consider.

But if we consider that regulated sectors have a completely different logic from competitive logic, both from an economic and a legal point of view, the Law of Regulation refers in particular to the notion of public service and having its own institutions, which are the regulatory authorities, then certain behaviors, in particular monopolies, are not illegitimate in themselves and do not have to justify themselves in relation to the competitive model, for they are not the exception ( Such as the public education or health service).

Le plan est  actualisé chaque semaine au fur et à mesure que les leçons se déroulent en amphi.

Il est disponible ci-dessous.

Retourner à la présentation générale du cours.

(Avant le début des enseignements de Droit de la Régulation bancaire et financière, un aperçu du plan général du Cours avait été mis à disposition.)

The Independent Administrative Authority (IAA) is the legal form that the legislator has most often chosen to build regulatory authorities. The IAA is only its legal form, but French law has attached great importance to it, following the often formalistic tradition of public law. They are thus independent administrative authorities, especially in the legal systems of continental law like France, Germany or Italy.

The essential element is in the last adjective: the "independent" character of the organism. This means that this organ, which is only administrative so has a vocation to be placed in the executive hierarchy, does not obey the Government. In this, regulators have often been presented as free electrons, which posed the problem of their legitimacy, since they could no longer draw upstream in the legitimacy of the Government. This independence also poses the difficulty of their responsibility, the responsibility of the State for their actions, and the accountability of their use of their powers. Moreover, the independence of regulators is sometimes questioned if it is the government that retains the power to appoint the leaders of the regulatory authority. Finally, the budgetary autonomy of the regulator is crucial to ensure its independence, although the authorities having the privilege of benefiting from a budget - which is not included in the LOLF - are very few in number. They are no longer referred to as "independent administrative authorities" but as "Independent Public Authorities", the legislator making a distinction between the two (French Law of 20 January 2017).

The second point concerns the second adjective: that it is an "administrative" body. This corresponds to the traditional idea that regulation is the mechanism by which the State intervenes in the economy, in the image of a kind of deconcentration of ministries, in the Scandinavian model of the agency. If we allow ourselves to be enclosed in this vocabulary, we conclude that this administrative body makes an administrative decision which is the subject of an appeal before a judge. Thus, in the first place, this would be a first instance appeal and not a judgment since the administrative authority is not a court. Secondly, the natural judge of the appeal should be the administrative judge since it is an administrative decision issued by an administrative authority. But in France the Ordinance of 1 December 1986 sur la concurrence et la libéralisation des prix (on competition and price liberalization), because it intended precisely to break the idea of ​​an administered economy in order to impose price freedom on the idea of ​​economic liberalism, required that attacks against the decisions of economic regulators taking the form of IAA are brought before the Court of Appeal of Paris, judicial jurisdiction. Some great authors were even able to conclude that the Paris Court of Appeal had become an administrative court. But today the procedural system has become extremely complex, because according to the IAA and according to the different kinds of decisions adopted, they are subject to an appeal either to the Court of Appeal of Paris or to the Conseil d'État (Council of State) . If one observes the successive laws that modify the system, one finds that after this great position of principle of 1986, the administrative judge gradually takes again its place in the system, in particular in the financial regulation. Is it logical to conclude that we are returning to a spirit of regulation defined as an administrative police and an economy administered by the State?

Finally, the third term is the name itself: "authority". It means in the first place an entity whose power holds before in its "authority". But it marks that it is not a jurisdiction, that it takes unilateral decisions. It was without counting the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the judicial judge! Indeed, Article 6§1 of the European Convention on Human Rights states that everyone has the right to an impartial tribunal in civil and criminal matters. The notion of "criminal matter" does not coincide with the formal traditional concept of criminal law but refers to the broad and concrete factual concept of repression. Thus, by a reasoning which goes backwards, an organization, whatever the qualification that a State has formally conferred on it, which has an activity of repression, acts "in criminal matters". From this alone, in the European sense, it is a "tribunal". This automatically triggers a series of fundamental procedural guarantees for the benefit of the person who is likely to be the subject of a decision on his part. In France, a series of jurisprudence, both of the Cour de cassation (Court of Cassation), the Conseil d'État (Council of State) or the Conseil constitutionnel (Constitutional Council) has confirmed this juridictionnalization of the AAI.

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.

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Lire l'article. 

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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.

Le plan est  actualisé chaque semaine au fur et à mesure que les leçons se déroulent en amphi.

Il est disponible ci-dessous.

Retourner à la présentation générale du cours, tel qu'il était bâti et proposé en 2018.

Complete reference : Archives de Philosophie du Droit (APD), Droit et économie, tome 37, ed. Sirey, 1992, 426 p. 

Read the table of contents.

Read the summaries of the articles in english. 

See the presentation of others volumes of Archives de Philosophie du Droit.

► Full Reference: Marty, F., The Case for Compliance Programs in International Competitiveness: A Competition Law and Economics Perspective, in Frison-Roche, M.-A. (ed.),Compliance Monumental Goals, series "Compliance & Regulation", Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, to be published.

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► Article Summaryésumé de l'article (done by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance): The author analyzes economically the question of whether the compliance programs set up to respect competition rules are for the sole purpose of avoiding sanctions or also contribute to the goal of increasing the international economic performance of companies. which submit to them.

The author explains that companies integrate by duplication external standards to minimize the risk of sanctions, developing a "culture of compliance", which produces their competitiveness increase and the effectiveness of the legal and economic system. In addition, it reduces the cost of investment, which increases the attractiveness of the company.

In this, this presentation based on the postulate of the rationality of companies and investors, compliance programs can fall under self-regulation. The duplication of the law that they operate takes place largely according to "procedural" type methods.

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📝 go to the general presentation of the book 📘Compliance Monumental Goals, in which this article is published

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The United States established regulatory authorities at the end of the 19th century: starting from the principle of the market, they tempered it by setting up regulators, after noting market failures, for example in terms of transport, in the event of economically natural monopolies or essential facilities. The tradition of the European Union is the reverse since the States, in particular the French State, have considered that sectors of general interest, deemed unsuitable for the competitive pattern because not corresponding to the operational pattern of the meeting of supply and demand, and to serve the missions of public services, were to be held by the State, either directly by public establishments, or by public enterprises under the supervision of the ministries.

Evolution in Europe came from community Law. Indeed, after the Second World War, the idea was to build a market which was to be "common" to European countries so that they could no longer wage war on each other in the future. To achieve this goal, the borders between them were lifted thanks to the principles of free movement of people, goods and capital. In the same way, the defense by each of the States of its own national companies by State aid has been prohibited so that any company, even foreign, can enter its territory, so that a common internal market can be established. Finally, a competition Law was necessary to prohibit companies and States from hindering the free functioning of the market, which would have slowed down or even stopped the construction of this internal market, which was an essentially political goal of the Treaty of Rome.

To carry out this political goal, the European Commission and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU, previously called the Court of Justice of the European Communities - CJEC - until the Treaty of Lisbon) have prohibited any behavior of agreement or of abuse of a dominant position, even on the part of public enterprises, as well as any state support (except in the event of a crisis). Likewise, in perfect political logic, but also in perfect contradiction with European national traditions, European texts, regulations or directives have liberalized previously monopolistic sectors, first of all telecommunications and then energy. This was the case for telecommunications with the 1993 directive, the 1996 directive for electricity and the 1998 directive for gas.

Because of the hierarchy of standards, the States, except to be sued before the Court of Justice by the European Commission in action for failure, were obliged to transpose by national laws these European texts. Thus, by force, community law, both through general competition Law, but above all to achieve its political goal of building a single and initially peaceful internal market, has triggered in Europe a system of economic regulation in all network industry sectors, a system which was nonetheless foreign to the culture of the Member States. This was not the case with banking and insurance regulations, sectors which have always been threatened by systemic risk, and as such have been regulated and supervised by national central banks for a very long time.

Community Law has for 30 years plunged into national Law while ignoring them, which could also be profitable, and on the basis of competition Law, the political dimension of the European project having been forgotten, no doubt over time as the War itself faded from people's minds.

The effects of globalization and the financial crisis have constituted a new turning point in Community Law which, since 2010, has been built no longer to modify national Laws - and destroy them in part - but to build a new Community Law which should neither to Competition Law nor to National Law: Community Regulation Law, which makes room for individual rights and attempts to build over time a system that is robust to crises. Thus, by texts of the European Union of 2014, both a Banking Union and a new Law on Market Abuse is being built, which aims to establish a common law for the integrity of financial markets.

One of the challenges is what could or should be reconciliation between the two Europe, an economic and still not very social Europe on the one hand and the Europe of Human Rights, which is based on the European Convention on Rights of Man. This is not on the agenda.

Référence complète : Response to the Study on Directors’ Duties and Sustainable Corporate Governance by Nordic Company Law Scholars, octobre 2020.

Lire le rapport

► Référence complète : A.-M. Ilcheva, "Condamnation de Shell aux Pays-Bas : la responsabilité climatique des entreprises pétrolières se dessine", D. 2021, pp. 1968-1970

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► Résumé de l'article : Après une brève description de l'affaire en cause au principal, l'auteure explicite dans un premier les fondements du jugement dit "Shell". Elle explique que l'action engagée était fondée sur le droit de la responsabilité civile délictuelle néerlandais, plus précisément le "duty of care" de l'article 6:162 du code civil néerlandais, lequel amène le juge, afin d'établir le fait générateur, à apprécier le comportement de l'entreprise défenderesse au regard du standard de comportement de la personne prudente et raisonnable. Sont également mobilisés par le juge des travaux scientifiques (rapport du GIEC), des normes de droit international (CEDH) et des normes de droit souple (Principes directeurs de l'ONU), afin de caractériser tant le fait générateur que le dommage (notamment futur). Dans un second temps, l'auteure envisage la portée de ce jugement, frappé d'appel au moment de la rédaction de son article. Elle souligne que le juge s'est appuyé sur la notion d'entreprise, permettant ainsi de contourner l'obstacle traditionnel lié à la personnalité morale, et qu'il a retenu ici une responsabilité préventive, tournée vers le futur. Elle termine en mettant en avant les conditions nécessaires pour que ce jugement soit effectif et constate que l'effort demandé à l'entreprise est plus important que celui préconisé par les rapports d'experts.

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🦉Cet article est accessible en texte intégral pour les personnes inscrites aux enseignements de la Professeure Marie-Anne Frison-Roche

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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.

► Full Reference: J.-B. Racine, "Obligation de Compliance et droits humains" ("Compliance Obligation and Human Rights"), in M.-A. Frison-Roche (dir.), L'Obligation de Compliance, Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Dalloz, "Régulations & Compliance" Serie, 2024, to be published.

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📕read a general presentation of the book, L'Obligation de Compliance, in which this article is published

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► English Summary of the article (done by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance - JoRC) : The author asks whether human rights can, over and above the many compliance obligations, form the basis of the Compliance Obligation. The consideration of human rights corresponds to the fundamentalisation of Law, crossing both Private and Public Law, and are considered by some as the matrix of many legal mechanisms, including international ones. They prescribe values that can thus be disseminated.

Human rights come into direct contact with Compliance Law as soon as Compliance Law is defined as "the internalisation in certain operators of the obligation to structure themselves in order to achieve goals which are not natural to them, goals which are set by public authorities responsible for the future of social groups, goals which these companies must willingly or by force aim to achieve, simply because they are in a position to achieve them". These "Monumental Goals" converge on human beings, and therefore the protection of their rights by companies. 

In a globalised context, the State can either act through mandatory regulations, or do nothing, or force companies to act through Compliance Law. For this to be effective, tools are needed to enable 'crucial' operators to take responsibility ex ante, as illustrated in particular by the French law on the Vigilance Obligation of 2017.

This obligation takes the form of both a "legal obligation", expression which is quite  imprecise, found for example in the duty of vigilance of the French 2017 law, and in a more technical sense through an obligation that the company establishes, in particular through contracts.

Legal obligations are justified by the fact that the protection of human rights is primarily the responsibility of States, particularly in the international arena. Even if it is only a question of Soft Law, non-binding Law, this tendency can be found in the Ruggie principles, which go beyond the obligation of States not to violate human rights, to a positive obligation to protect them effectively. The question of whether this could apply not only to States but also to companies is hotly debated. If we look at the ICSID Urbaser v. Argentina award of 2016, the arbitrators accepted that a company had an obligation not to violate human rights, but rejected an obligation to protect them effectively. In European Law, the GDPR, DSA and AIA, and in France the so-called Vigilance law, use Compliance Lools, often Compliance by Design, to protect human rights ex ante.

Contracts, particularly through the inclusion of multiple clauses in often international contracts, express the "privatisation" of human rights. Care should be taken to ensure that appropriate sanctions are associated with them and that they do not give rise to situations of contractual imbalance. The relationship of obligation in tort makes it necessary to articulate the Ex Ante logic and the Ex Post logic and to conceive what the judge can order.

The author concludes that "la compliance oblige à remodeler les catégories classiques du droit dans l’optique de les adosser à l’objectif même de la compliance : non pas uniquement un droit tourné vers le passé, mais un droit ancré dans les enjeux du futur ; non pas un droit émanant exclusivement de la contrainte publique, mais un droit s’appuyant sur de la normativité privée ; non pas un droit strictement territorialisé, mais un droit appréhendant l’espace transnational" ("Compliance requires us to reshape the classic categories of Law with a view to bringing them into line with the very objective of Compliance: not just a Law turned towards the past, but a Law anchored in the challenges of the future; not a Law emanating exclusively from public constraint, but a Law based on private normativity; not a strictly territorialised Law, but a law apprehending the transnational space".

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► Full Reference: L. Rapp, "Compliance, Value Chains and Service Economy", in M.-A. Frison-Roche (ed.), Compliance Obligation, Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, "Compliance & Regulation" Serie, to be published

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

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► Summary of the article (done by the author, translated by the Journal of Regulation & Compliance - JoRC): Based on an analysis of the value chains of companies in the space sector and their recent evolution, this contribution examine the role, place and current transformations of compliance policies and strategies in the context of an industrial transformation that has become essential: the transition from an industrial economy to a service economy.

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

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