The implementation of a common repertory of information on Social Security tax payments provides the opportunity to gather real-time information on a vast majority of taxpayers, but is highly criticized for its possible violation of privacy rights.
The "Confederadion Empresarios del Juego COFAR" (the Spanish Confederation of the Game) have organized a symposium on 20 June in Barcelona, in which European regulators expressed including the France, the Spain, the Italy and the Portugal. The chairmen of the national regulatory authorities first emphasized their concern for common standards to a European market of a market of online games, including in what could become a domain identified name to refer to European players. In addition, the conference showed their desire for a stronger opening of a European market of online games. This fact also achieved through domain names.
The principle of "open internet" enshrined in the European regulation of 30th of April 2016 guaranteeing a non discriminatory access to Internet contents and services. However, there is no European regulator to implement such a principle. Is it possible to guarantee the effectivity of this principle without a central regulator in charge of this principle?
On 11st of June 2020, the BEREC (Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications) adopted guidelines concerning the application of the open internet principle. The BEREC is not a European regulator but a network of national regulators aiming to coordinate their actions. This body is only a consultative body but its recommendations are taken into account by national authorities which have deep legal power, as Osborne-Clarke said about the technical implementation of the European principle of open internet at the national level.
It is thus non necessary to have a central regulator to ensure the effectivity of a principle since the moment when there is a local regulators network able to coordinate their actions through soft law.
David J. Dickinson is an Attorney-Advisor for the Office of Transportation and Air Quality within the Office of Air and Radiation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC.
He received his J.D from George Washington University, National Law Center in Washington, D.C., and his B.A. in History and Political Science from the University of California, San Diego.
In Luxembourg, a regulator is especially in charge of "cybersecurity". The Cyber Security Board, created by the Act of February 27, 2011, on networks and electronic communications services has been implemented in July 2011. It is chaired by the Ministry of communication and media. On June 4, 2012, this regulator met on 4 June 2012. Based on the law that requires access providers to prevent and manage risks to ensure cyber security, the regulator decided to create a single window to centralize information on the cyber security incidents, information transmitted by the citizens, the regulator then transferring this information to companies for them to take adequate measures to fight the risk against security.
The activity of money laundering is detrimental not only in itself but also because it permits the development and the sustainability of other criminal activities such as drug trafficking, weapon trafficking or human beings selling. Fighting against money laundering could permit to indirectly fight against these underlying activities, by the way very difficult to fight. Thus, the fight against money laundering has become a "monumental goal", which justifies the adoption of tools sometimes much more powerful than those used by classical criminal Law. For the sake of efficiency, the legal obligation to prevent money laundering is given to every body able to do it, as banks, real estate agents or gaming society, under the penalty of sanction.
On 10th of August 2020, the Luxembourgish financial market supervisor convicts the International Bank of Luxembourg to pay a fine of 4,5 millions of euros because of weaknesses detected in its process of fight against money laundering. However, when the sanction has been pronounced, the bank had already remedied the weaknesses identified. It is important to observe that what is important for Compliance Law, it is not that a non compliant behavior is punished but rather that the crucial firm modifies its behavior in order to being more efficient in the realization of the "monumental goal", only concern of the public authority. Thus, an Ex Post sanction against the crucial operator is not an end in itself and can be justified only if it permits to incite the crucial operator to act or rather to desincite to do anything. Compliance Law is an Ex Ante legal system.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is an organ, depending on the American Treasury, in charge of fighting against financial criminality and especially against money laundering and terrorism financing. For this, it has large control and sanction powers.
In August 2020, the FinCEN published a document untitled "Statement on Enforcement" which aimed to explicit its control and sanction methods. It reveals what firms risk in case of offense (from the simple warning letter to criminal pursuits passing through financial fines) and the different criteria on which FinCEN is based to use one sanction rather than another. Among these criteria, we find for examples the nature and the seriousness of committed violations or the firm's history but also the implementation of compliance program or the quality and the spread of the cooperation with FinCEN durning the investigation.
One of the objectives of the publication of such an information document is to obtain the cooperation of firms by creating a confidence relationship between the regulator and the regulated firm. However, it is very difficult to ask to the firms to cooperate and to furnish information if they can fear that this same information can be used later as proof against them by the FinCEN.
Another objective is to reinforce legal security and transparency. However, the FinCEN's declaration does not seem to commit it, because it is not presented as a chart but as a simple declaration. Indeed, the list of the possible sanctions and the criteria used by the FinCEN are far from being exhaustive and can be completed in concreto by the FinCEN without any justification.
The repression is inseparable from how to repress. This is why the procedural difficulties are indicative of underlying fundamental problems. Currently, the basic issue updated by the battles around the procedures of financial sanctions is about the sanction bais.
For the regulator, the penalty is one tool among others to regulate financial markets. The penalty in a continuum with its legislative powers, are its teeth and claws through which financial markets are developing. The purpose of financial policy justifies an objective repression with a probationary system often based on presumptions leading to impute breaches players in some positions on or financial markets. The regulator must have this card in hand and use it according to this method.
Moreover, if it happens that people commit reprehensible misconducts, perceived as such by the social group, they should be punished, possibly up to the prison. Only the criminal justice is legitimate to do so legitimately weighed down by the burden of proving intentionality, etc.
We must distinguish these two types of criminality. It is from there that the two procedures and two probationary systems can take place at the same time but on different offenses.
For now this is not the case, as "financial misconduct" are only the carbon copy of "financial crimes" lightened loads of evidence that protected the defendant and who should answer for now twice.
Procedural problem? No, problem of criminalization, which won't be released by procedural solutions, the most hazardous being to create a new institution, the most calamitous being to weaken the system by removing one of the ways of prosecution. It is necessary to make distinctions in the offenses that are currently redundant.
Thus, repression as a regulatory tool used by the Regulator is in focus, but the real financial criminal law remains to be consolidated to achieve its own and classic goal: punish faults including through the prison.
The European Commission, sensing potential anticompetitive behaviour in the pharmaceutical sector, conducted an inquiry into this sector, and adopted its final report on the matter on July 8th 2009. The Commission’s suspicion was that anticompetitive behaviours could be slowing down the entry of generic drugs into national markets, whereas the burden of drug spending on public finances and public health policy make rapid generic entry an important issue. The Commission concluded that delays are due in part to pharmaceutical companies’ behaviour, especially as concerns the use they make of their intellectual property rights.
However, on the other hand, one may also sustain that the strategic use of an acquired legal right is no less than legitimate, and that public health policy is a matter for national regulation. Indeed, it is for Member States, rather than European competition law, to determine the level of healthcare coverage that their society is financially willing to bear.
