Reading the press, for example Les Echos January 16, 2015, we learn that Standard & Poor's will sign an agreement of $ 1 billion with the US administration to avoid a trial.
One can only be amazed or even upset.
First, the agreement is not yet concluded. It would be in a month or two. How is it that we already know? Secondly, contracts, because the transaction is a contract listed by the Civil Code, are not intended to be public. How is it that we already know everything? The person who gave the information "was keen to remain anonymous." It would have suspected ......
Third, it is true that the regulation of rating agencies is a big issue. Special texts have been taken but academics think the right tools stay missing and that is probably the liability, general legal instrument, which is the most appropriate.
But the responsibility of commitment requires a trial, evidence, respect for the rights of defense, due processs, legality of offenses and penalties.. Here, $ 1 billion is paid by the company only to avoid that opens a lawsuit against it. The allegation is the rating agency would have underestimated the subprime risk.
But on one hand everyone says that the rating agency has actually done the facts allegued since payroll so that the file doesn't open. On the other hand, and from the perspective of regulating the information that would be out of the trial, a trial being a form of crisis, will not come out.
So this sort of industry fof "Deals of Justice", apart from the fact that some describe the phenomenon as a "racket", isn't a "decriminalization" of regulation for a "civilized regulation" through the transaction contract. On the contrary, this movement that is spreading constitutes an increased repression whic diminishes rights of defense for the operator and information for the sector.
Some says that defining Compliance is a theoretical and non useful exercice that should be left aside to tackle the study of concrete technical cases. However, to be able to use Compliance tools, it is first necessary to have a clear, firm and simple idea of what is Compliance. Moreover, the future of this new branch of law intensely depends on the definition we choose to use.
Compliance Law gives to some crucial private firms new responsibilities such as the one to fight against global dangers or the one of saving the planet. In this, Compliance Law can be perceived as a kind of new deal between the private sector and public authorities, with the only difference that this time the consent of the private sector is not required.
Some would say that the concretization of such projects is the duty of the State and that private firms, if they must respect the rules, do not have to find a way to concretize a "monumental goal". However, the world face new and systemic dangers in the face of which the State alone is powerless, technically or geographically, and against which crucial companies can act.
It is not about, as some advocate to put human being aside of Compliance Law by letting machines decide. It is about placing the human being and its protection at the heart of Compliance Law. In this, Compliance Law can become a new humanism.
This shows that the document is primarily intended for investors and financial markets, the document being placed on the company website in the section for the "investors".
This illustrates the evolution from the traditional "contrats de plan" (plan contracts). But then, who are the parties to these types of contract?
Indeed, the very term "Regulatory contract" is new in public Law. It appears as a sort of modernization of "plan contract." The Conseil d'État (French State Council) finally admitted the contractual nature of these planning contracts. In these contracts, are parties were the State and the company in charge of a public service.
Because here the contract is an instrument of "economic regulation" the open public consultation draft rather expresses a global conception of ADP, the company which manages the Paris airports, for the future of the development of critical infrastructure that is the airport as the heart of global development of air transport.
The enterprise manager of the airport in the heart of the contract (rather than the State) in setting objectives for the coming four years is the letter and spirit of the French law of 20 April 2005 about Airports, which put the apparatus of this "Contrat de Régulation Economique" in place.
In this, the infrastructure manager is set by law as a "regulator of second degree", as can be a financial market enterprise. The company that manages and develops the Paris airports undoubtedly belongs to the category of " critical firms", as well it manages the future of the sector and helps to keep France a place in the world.
More, A.D.P. behaves like a Regulator, since it is carrying out the "public consultation", the consultation paper prepared by it, being placed on its site and developing its ambitions for the sector and for France. But A.D.P. also expressed as a financial and economic actor, emphasizing the competitive environment, demanding in passing more stability and clarity in the regulation in which it moves ...
That is why the consultation mechanism provided by the law must be more complex. Indeed, ADP can not be judge and jury. Therefore if the project raises observations, they must be formuled not to ADP but to the Ministries of Aviation and Economy, within a month. They shall communicate theiir content to ADP . Then the Commission consultative aéroportaire (French Airport Consultative Committee) will be consulted. At the end of this process, the "Contrat de Régulation Economique" will be signed.
Seing the end of the process, it remains in line with the plan contracts, since it remains the Economic Regulatory Contract is signed between the State and the essential infrastructure manager. But the consultation process shows firstly investors are the first recipients of the statements made by a privatized company presenting its draft primarily in terms of competitive context and international development and secondly the airlines that use daily services of the airports are also directly involved by theses questions of tarification.
Airlines protest against the increase in the money that will be asked. This will be imposed, since it is tarification and princing public policy. We are in unilateral rules. But it is indeed a "price" they feel to pay, they also heard a speech referring to competition in what the mechanism is presented as a "contract".
But then, does it take to admit that these "contracts for economic regulation" are not between two parties that are the state and the regulator of second degree that is the infrastructure manager but must be three, the State, the infrastructure manager and "stakeholders" that are mainly airlines?
This practical difficulty is much to the fact that the qualification of "contract" is difficult to justify in proceeding in which prevail unilateral mechanisms.
Impartiality of the regulator is one of the most important principles of Regulation and Compliance Law. However, this impartiality can be difficult to implement when the regulation object has a strong moral dimension.
In August 2020, various religious associations sized the Conseil National de Régulation de l'Audiovisuel sénégalais (Senegalese audiovisual regulatory authority) to ask the interdiction of broadcasting on television of the film "Les infidèles" telling the story of a married woman with multiple lovers.
First, the regulator distinguishes the sequences likely to be detrimental to cultural and religious identities and shocking sequences or likely to attack the dignity of the person. Then, it asks the deletion of indecent and obscene scenes and of scenes likely to be detrimental to cultural and religious identities, bans the broadcasting of the film in the television before 10.30 pm, asks an update of the trailer and requires the introduction of a pictogram "forbidden to children under 16" during the broadcasting. The CNRA judges itself able to regulate the content of telefilms in order to protect cultural identities with regards to the law of 4th of January setting its mission.
In 2012, a similar controversy surrounded, in France, the broadcasting of a different film with the same name. However, the purpose and the context were very different because the film was broadcasted at cinema, because it presented adultery men, because it was comic, because the competent regulator was not an administrative body but a professional body and because the broadcasting country was not the same. Here, only the poster was modified.
Thus, an impartial regulation must however taking into consideration "local cultural identities".
This conference aims to better understand the legal mechanisms for international regulatory mechanisms of water, especially in view of climate change, to articulate the role of states and private investment contracts, to understand the legal nature of water as a "resource" but also as "human right" especially in view of the determination of its price, and to mesure the legal consequences of globalization on the matter.
Indeed, the term "guidelines" is common in how each and designates certain documents prepared by the regulatory authorities. These give themselves this appellation to documents made ex ante to give operators the "outline" of the future action of the regulator. Thus, the "guidelines" would produce legal certainty while maintaining flexibility, since in the future the authority will continue to set its position on a case by case basis.
Now comes the case: it was necessary that the "hard right" come bless the "soft law".
In this case, was challenged before the administrative judge an "instruction" from this Agency for French Teaching Abroad for the "consideration of the financial situation of the parents" seeking a scholarship to the child. A local agency for awarding grants had rejected a request no meeting the criteria developed in the statement. Parents have acted appeal for abuse of power. They both lost before the Cour administrative d'appel de Paris (Administrative Court of Pari) that before the Conseil d'État.
However, the Council recognizes that the Agence pour l'enseignement français à l'étranger has no regulatory power. But the judgement takes in considération that:"l'instruction en cause a énoncé, à l'intention des commissions locales, des lignes directrices, sans fixer de normes à caractère général qui se serait imposée de matière impérative à ces commissions"!footnote-8 .
Triumph of soft law!
Thus, organizations, "agencies", may take "general guidelines" here which do not contain any threshold and generating no rights, on which the commission take real decisions. These are based on the first document, but because of the "flexibility" of it, the one whose solution is affected by the particular decision does'not have the right to appeal.
All the beauty and effectiveness of "soft law". The judge, after having boasted, now offers it royal way.
Each year, the Autorité des marchés financiers (French financial markets regulator), the European Central Bank and the Agence française anti-corruption (French anti-corruption agency) publish risk maps. At first glance, risk maps established by the regulator aim to both help regulator and the regulated company to face risks by anticipating them. These documents would only be an assistance brought to firms in their Compliance mission and not an injunction from the regulator to take into account the risks that it emphasizes.
However, Law forces firms to do their own risk maps under penalty of sanctions. Since the regulator has previously published its own risk map, can companies, obliged to write theirs, deviate from it? If the firm follows the map published by the regulator, can it protect itself against this if it is accused of not having fulfilled its compliance obligations? On the contrary, if the operator does not follow regulator's risk map, can this be blamed on it? Formally, regulator's risk maps do not come with an injunction to take it into account but, as everyone knows, any recommendation from a regulator or supervisor must be taken into account.
The legal solution could here be the implementation of a system of "comply or explain" which would mean that if the firm decides to no follow the risk map established by the regulator, it must be able to justify its choice.
Summary: By its judgment of September 24, 2020, the Constitutional Court of Belgium released an essential judgment which considers:
- Compliance Law which imposes obligations on entities to fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism is legal requirements which must be analyzed on the basis of these goals
- the national transposition law is "broader" than the transposed European texts since it is anchored in the Constitution
- the provisions of the law imposing the declaration of suspicion on an employee of the Attorney or on a Compliance Officer concerning information covered by the professional secrecy of the Attorney, the basis of Democracy, must therefore be canceled.
This reasoning is remarkable and very solid.
It is not unique to Belgium.
The Libor is the rate of the interbank market practised in the United Kingdom. A large number of financial operations are based on it. So far, its daily development is grounded on a declaratory system on the part of the banks. Since the conviction of Barclays on June 27, 2012 by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the general suspicion that a very great banks have contributed to manipulations of the Libor, the relevance of the system itself is questioned.
While investigations and prosecutions was put in place for the past in all countries, British Government give to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) study of reform of a Libor, either to detach itself from a declaratory system, or to keep an eye on it and internalize effective sanctions. The report, which will serve as a basis for the reform will be made the end of September 2012.
