The Compliance Law

Lire la version française, qui a servi de base à l'article publié "Le Droit de la Compliance".

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