This is currently the great battle and no one knows the outcome.
By its jugdment Grande Stevens of 4 March 2014, the European Court of Human Rights held that a state can't punish a person for a criminal penalty and administrative penalty for the same fact, criticized in market matters.
In the movement of the "dialogue of judges," the Conseil d'Etat (French State Council) asked 27 July 2014 the Conseil constitutionnel (French Constitutional Counci) l the question of compliance from this addition to the French Constitution for financial penalty in the use of public funds. By a decision of 24 October 2014, the Constitutional Council considered that this combination was consistent with the Constitution, mainly because the administrative sanction would be a "different kind" as punishment, because each pursues a different objective.
In turn, by a judgment of 17 December 2014, the Cour de cassation (French Judicial Supreme Court) decided to refer to the Constitutional Council two priority issues of constitutionality.
The presentation of the problem by the Cour de Cassation is the following. By its terms, it shows the hostility of the Court of Cassation to the doctrine hitherto developed by the State Council and the Constitutional Council.
First, the interpretation of French law provides penal proceedings against a person for facts on which it has been exonerated by the financial regulator by the Sanctions Committee thereof. This may contradict the constitutional principle of res judicata, as incurred administrative penalties are comparable to penal sanctions.
Second, this possibility could also contradict the constitutional principles of equality, necessity of criminal law and respect of non bis in idem mechanism.
Certainly, cleverly, the Supreme Court asks not accumulated penalties but of double jeopardy, which when one went out to "turn" the other.
Will the Constitutional Council get easier in accordance with European design without recant ? For example, it could estimate that the cumulative sentences is eligible as soon as proportionality is respected, but the extinction of a case before a judge removes the ability to exercise the other?
Or shouLawopen the wound? Finally decide to open rather multiple sides bear claw blows?
The Finance Committee of the Senate works to think in a more consistent way sanctioning powers of financial regulators need. Indeed, sanctions are tools that must be thought at first hand according to the goals that must be provided in the second part in relation to other tools the financial regulator has, in the third part in relation to the purposes and powers other authorities are responsible and have (supervisory authorities, European bodies, foreign and international judges, professional authorities).
It is in this overall vision that this storm that exceeds the glass of water must be replaced.
It is true the Directive of the European Parliament and the Council follows a consultation conducted for several years by the European Commission on the subject of Social Responsibility. Whatever might have said the "stakeholders", the Directive contains the same lines tham the European Commission Communication of 13 April 2011, adopted on 25 October 2011 on the topic.
It is difficult today to oppose "Hard Law" and "Soft Law": Law hardens gradually. Thus, from the "communication", we went to the "resolutions", whose status remains uncertain, both a communication firmer but less binding than a law, since resolution is only for its author ... Thus Parliament in its resolutions of 6 February 2013 'resolved' to design an "inclusive" vision of the corporate action, to dance together profitability and social justice. To get by, it must suffice to say that the Social Responsibility Company is "multidimensional" ... Guidelines of the European Commission (non-binding) will explicit. Wait and see.
Following a series of obligations on information that companies must make available "to the public and authorities." Thus, companies must do the work instead of public authorities themselves. The provisions relating to non-financial information are mandatory and standardized. They are particularly demanding on the environment.
But when the text provides more substantial obligations, such as making the activity business less polluting, the Directive simply ask the member states to encourage companies to adopt "best practices" in the field. The market itself is incitative, in particular for making boards of large corporations more diverses. Because the principle is the belief that "investor access to non-financial information is a step towards achieving the goal of effective .... Europe in the use of resources," in a regulatory context of a "smart, sustainable and inclusive" growth".
When one likes the "Financial law," one is delighted to open the second edition of the Droit financier (Financial Law), Frenche book written by Anne-Dominique Merville and publishes at Gualino - Lextenso édition (392 p.).
Indeed, the reader learns the most recent technical rules. If it is difficult to know "Financial law" this is because it doesn't really constitute a "branch of the law." It seems an accumulation of laws, rules, decisions and soft law adopted to serve the financial market.
Significantly way, in the book construction, there is no place especially for the "financial Regulation" while itsTitle II is about " Les régulateurs des marchés financiers" (The financial market regulators). This suggests that the financial regulatory system is primarily due to the regulatory body. This is maybe true.
Reading developments, it is observed that the European Central Bank is listed among "The financial market regulators".
For my part, for several years I do think that a central bank is a regulator. But as it is currently a supervisor and that there is a fundamental distinction between regulation and supervision. It's why it is necessary to demonstrate the transition from one to the other or intimacy between them, to affirm so easily that a central bank, monetary authority, is a financial regulator.
Yet the author assume acquired, showing that the qualification is already in the mind. The development will come after. It will impose yet because this change of qualification has important consequences. It involves jurisdictionalization of Central Banks that we still do not know and have not conceived.
Internet requires regulation. It does not works solely because of the moral sense of the users or through vigilance of companies that develop on it.
The regulator of the virtual space can be imagined, or a regulator of the various possible activities that develop there, regulators then deploying their powers as when the activity takes place on the Internet. Thus, it is the case of advertising.
In the UK, the Advertising Standard Authority (ASA) monitors the advertising business, also on the Internet.
Its decision of 26 November 2014 is remarkable for several reasons. It punishes two non-professionals, namely two users Youtube tool. But in communication, non-market entrepreneurs sometimes have more weight than businesses. But on the Internet, users can sponsor their free activity, which is to monetize. In this case, the two had played on their Youtube channel short films that were advertisements.
The complaint made against them is that Youtube is not a support on which those who put content make it to commercial purposes. And other users could not understand they watched the advertisement and not a distraction film or information.
The Regulator imposes a sanction against Internet users not because they did a promotional contract with the company, in this case Cadbury wich wants to promote Oreo cookies. By this contract, the entreprisee via the famous Internet users can reach consumers, which is permissible. They are punished because they have deceived the confidence of the other Internet users who can't imagine being the target of an advertisement. The fact that it is people with many fans on youtube counted in the severity of the Regulator. Indeed, they have more than 2 million subscribers. More than 1.3 million have seen the offending video. Only 243 people have not loved it.
Thus, in a virtual world always close to self-regulation, the notion of trust made to the information transmitters is the central concept of the system served by the Regulator power to impose sanctions,The author of the message is a professional or not is irrelevant. What matters is the importance that others give the message he sends.
Professor Hervé Causse released a book of over 800 pages: Droit bancaire et financier (Banking and Financial Law).
Typically, there are "Banking Law" on one side and "Financial Law" on the other, each giving rise to separate books, Banking Law having long since detached from the Commercial Law and do having never really left Civil Law, Financial Law being more subject recently of books.
Typically, there are the "Banking Law" on one side and the "Financial Law" on the other, each giving rise to separate books, banking, having long since detached from the Commercial Law and do having never really left the Civil Law, financial law being more subject recently of books.
In the books of "Banking Law", we find the contracts, transactions (credit), mechanisms (like money), institutions (such as the National Central Bank) and sometimes specific repressive rules.
In the books of "financial law", first of all, we meet financial market, financial transactions (like all securities transactions or takeovers bids), the economy is much more present, the US Law being at home because of extraterritoriality as either model, repressive rules slipping everywhere, to the heart of what appears to be today a branch of law.
The important work of Hervé Causse goes further and corresponds to reality: it merges the Banking and Financial Law.
He does it because his work is based on the life of the sector, that is to say the professionals. In fact, professionals work in banks. Then he describes those who admit and control their activities, that is to say the authorities of supervision and regulation. He goes on to describe to the reader the instruments, financial prowess that the bankers invent.
Thus sucked by financial reality, what is left of the civil commitment of Banking Law? To take just one example, when the author discusses the concept of "banking service" from that of "financial service", he finds the uncertainty of this notions. The Banking Law is thus trying to forget the Civil Code, the “deposition” techniques being one example.
Thanks to the book of Hervé Causse, the reader understands that the rules now being written by those designing financial regulation, these rules must find their bones in the financial regulatory system.
The Regulator itself issued the amount of the award to a whistleblower for having providing it with information. Why is that? One would usually take a lower profile when awarding this much money ($17m) to an informer… Conversely, the Regulator immediately and publicly announced it in a press release, which pretty looked like a tender offer for further denunciations. It even included a link for everyone to access the whistleblower program—which is easily funded, since the awards are charged on the fines imposed on the convicted operators thanks to the information given.
The reason for this is that information from whistleblowers is not merely indicative, nor a second-best option; it is central to Regulation, since it leads the Regulator to get information people within the system (i.e., insiders) deliberately chooses to ‘blow’ (in fact, not only do informers blow the whistle—they often immediately provide the Regulator with substantial information).
The press release includes justifications for the Regulator’s behaviour, as the SEC openly considers that rewarding whistleblowers is the most efficient way for the Regulator to open or to resolve investigations. The Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement stated indeed that “company insiders are uniquely positioned to protect investors and blow the whistle on a company’s wrongdoing by providing key information to the SEC so we can investigate the full extent of the violations”.
This highlights the ambivalence of insiders. Accordingly, they need to be ‘inside’ the system to be ‘knowledgeable’ and, consequently, obtain privileged information. On the one hand, should they use this information for themselves, then they would face prosecution for market abuse; on the other hand, however, if they use it to stir up the Regulator and shift its attention towards the whistle they’re blowing, then they may earn just as much money, if not more, than if they had behaved in a way that would have led them to prison.
The stage is thus set for the "business of virtue" to thrive.
